Indiana HS Basketball Tourney running thread...

State champ '89 checking in.

Class A -- I'm going with Jac-Cen-Del in an upset. Been to JCD before, I like the way they roll down in deepest southeast Indiana.

Class 2A -- Luers. See oft-repeated story from this thread about covering a game partially high in the Luers gym all those years ago. Brownstown was also once in my coverage area, and I would normally give the Mid-Southern Conference some love, but I think the Braves are going to get trucked.

Class 3A -- Princeton. Until recently, I thought Princeton was good for only two things: employing a ton of people at its Toyota plant and serving as an emergency food/drink stop for the Evansville-to-Terre Haute trek, and not a very good emergency stop at that (but, better than Vincennes). I haven't seen them play, but by all accounts, they're damn good.

Class 4A -- FW Snider. I'm picking Snider because Bloomington South was very fortunate to catch TH South with its best two players not 100 percent. I'm a Haute homer! And I heard from those I trust who have seen him play that Jordan Hulls is overrated.

 

Whuh? Never!

I'm an alum who was a senior when LN won their first title in 1989. That team consisted almost entirely of kids from Lawrence Township or who were bused in fair-and-square during the busing era.

I went to cover LN for the first time in eons a few weeks ago. It was fun, Keefer recognized me and we kibitzed, same with assistant coach Ralph Scott, who is a genuinely good guy.

But I was embarrassed -- check that, have been embarrassed for years -- at the brazen way LN cheats to get players. There's no way in hell that team -- with a 6-9 shooting guard and a lineup that is almost literally the future Louisville Cardinals -- should have lost to any high school team. There's no way they'd lose to the college team I cover.

Hard to root for the alma mater.

 

LN has more good big men than a decent Div. I college team. But LN has no guards, and that came back to kill them.

One reason they were unstoppable with Oden a few years back was because Mike Conley was there to be the Magic to Oden's Kareem (and there were a couple of other decent players around, too).

But Franklin Central had some talent (Purdue recruit Patrick Bade being the biggest piece of that in the middle), and from years of being around Indy, Mark James-coached teams manage to get a lot out of their talent (and you'd best not get behind them ... they do a pretty good job of sitting on a lead). Few people remember that it took basically a superhuman effort from Eric Gordon to beat James' JaJuan Johnson-led FC team (that also had Iowa coach Todd Lickliter's kid) two years ago in the regional final.

 

Half the people in Bloomington believe Jordan Hulls will start next year for IU and the other half believe he will lead the team in scoring.

 

Go Triton! Any team that knocks out Central Catholic is good with me.

 

Don't feel bad, Bubbler. LN is only doing what private schools have been able to get away with for years. I seem to recall in the Star that when it appeared the Hoosier Dome would never have a tenant, one of the reader suggetions was "place for Cathedral to stash recruits." Heck, here in Illinois, my neighbor's kid got a full-ride offer to play at Mount Carmel, as in the alma mater of Donovan McNabb and seemingly half the Chicago players in the NFL. (The dad turned it down.)

Now Keefer's going to have to recruit against charter schools, too. No wonder coaches pay big bucks to have Clark Francis give them a list of the nation's best fourth graders.

(By the way, Carmel grad checking in. Feel free to hate me and my allegedly pampered ass.)

 

I've seen Hulls play more than a few times this season. Trust me - he's only overrated if you're an IU goober who thinks he's the next great white hope.
He's a very good point guard with a great pull-up jumper. He's going to make the players around him better, and he'll find a way to win. He's also tough — played with what thought to be a broken nose in the regular-season finale and has attempted to take multiple charges (how he screwed up the nose) since then.
He's not great defensively (actually, he's just average — Dee Davis is a far superior on-the-ball defender). And he has a prolonged shooting slump early in the season, which is when your people might have seen him.
Terre Haute South may have been better when healthy, but the Braves still shot 3-of-28 from 3-point range. Everyone was missing. Everyone.
South definitely will win the 4A title. Talk to any coach who has seen them play - they're too good at too many things not to. Fort Wayne Snider is going to have to play the game of its life, then hope South struggles. That hasn't happened in 25 games this season - you like it to happen in game No. 26?

 

It's funny. When I was in high school, LN would not play Cathedral, which is not too far down the road. Why?

Wait for it ...

... because Cathedral recruited! Irony is ironic sometimes.

As for Carmel, they can go suck it!

An IU goober is about the last thing on Earth I could ever be described as, same for the person who told me that. Not saying it's gospel, just passing along an opinion.

 

Wait? They recruit? The people from Heritage Christian all claim that the bulk of their kids -- the ones who have produced a football title, a football runner-up, and four consecutive girls basketball titles (with five title-game appearances in six years), all in the eight years the school has been a member of the IHSAA -- have been K-12ers. Never mind the two best players on the girls basketball team transferred in prior to their eighth grade/freshman years and their starting lineup has kids from five different counties on it (at least 2 of which drive more than 45 minutes each way to go to an urban high school). No, all of their kids got there honestly.

School-jumping is a way of life in Marion County. The Star even ran a piece noting where every player on the Oden/Conley LN teams came from, when they moved to Lawrence Township, et al. (And the best player from the Ben Davis girls' run -- Shyra Ely, who later played at Tennessee -- had a brother playing for nearby Speedway a couple of years later). It's just that the private schools get to play against lesser competition in the state tourney now.

 

Bubbler is the single biggest Indiana University fanboi I've ever met. Honest.

 

Heritage Christian is the biggest load of shit in the state.

 

I know, because I looked it up for a piece I was writing, that Heritage Christian students of any age must give their own witness to Christ before being admitted to the school. I believe the surest shot witness these days is, "God put me on this earth to win you a basketball title." You're in!

Also, let's note -- Lawrence North, Cathedral, Heritage Christian -- all Lawrence Township schools! The center of cesspoolia is Northeast Marion County.