The Indiana basketball program is anxious to get the season underway. They have been working all year round on improving individual strength, speed and efficiency on the court.
The Hoosiers will officially begin practice on October 15th with ‘Hoosier Hysteria,’ an annual tradition. Tom Crean enters his third year as the head coach of one of the most storied college basketball programs in the country. After six wins his first year and ten last year, this season the team is focused at a .500 record. Very doable, but they must remain healthy.
Former strength and conditioning coach Jeff Watkinson left in July to become Eric Gordon’s personal trainer in LA. His loss will be underestimated. IU’s loss is EJ’s gain.
Replacing Coach Wat is Je’Ney Jackson, a former football player and coach. Jackson last served as secondary coach for the Southern Mississippi football team. He was suggested to Crean by former Colorado assistant coach Steve McClain who is now on staff at IU. Jackson was the strength coach while McClain was at University of Wyoming years ago. Below is a video illustrating the dedication and effort the team is putting into offseason conditioning.
Meanwhile, today Indiana announced that they will host Franklin College in their first exhibition game of the season on November 3rd at 7pm. The game will be televised on bigtennetwork.com, with a fee of course.
This year’s exhibition game will mark the 8th ever meeting, with Indiana holding a 7-0 advantage over the Grizzlies. IU hasn’t played Franklin since the 1935-1936 season.
The contest will be the Grizzlies’ first exhibition game with a modern NCAA Division I level program. Crean has acknowledged the fact that basketball in the state is so talented, why not take advantage of the talent pool. It started with the reviving of the Hoosier Classic between Indiana, Butler, Notre Dame and Purdue.
I think the more you can involve institutions from the area during the exhibition season, the stronger it makes both programs,” said Crean. “We appreciate the efforts of Coach (Kerry) Prather and assistant coach Adam Martin (Bloomington South graduate), and are excited to have them on the schedule.
You can imagine the impact it will have on the Franklin players as well. These guys are playing for the love of the game not for a scholarship because its Division III. Because of the history and tradition of Indiana basketball and Assembly Hall, it is a dream come true for Coach Prather and his kids.
We are very appreciative of Coach Crean’s generous invitation, and I applaud the fact that he has gone out of his way since coming to Indiana to engage the local small colleges to this extent. He is a class act building a solid program, and I am confident he is the right man to return IU basketball to a level of perennial national success. I’m a big fan of the work he is doing with the Hoosiers,” Prather said.