Indiana's woes ripple in NCAA tournament success
Thanks in large part to a short but tumultuous stay at Indiana, Jordan Crawford has had five college coaches despite just being a sophomore.
Now he's making his mark with Xavier, one of several players who severed ties with the Hoosiers and have gone on to come up big in the NCAA tournament at their new schools.
Crawford's former Hoosiers teammate, Armon Bassett, led Ohio to a first-round victory over Georgetown. Two other players - Xavier's Terrell Holloway and West Virginia's Devin Ebanks - are also in the tournament after backing out of commitments to play for the Crimson and Cream.
Crawford says he and other former Hoosiers aren't to blame for the state of the program they left.
``Somebody had to be blamed for it. It was us,'' Crawford said. ``When you're going through it, you don't really have emotions or feelings for it, but after the fact, you kind of get mad that you get blamed for it. You can see me and Armon, we're doing good in the NCAA right now.''
Crawford scored 28 points in Xavier's opening win over Minnesota in the West Regional and will play Pittsburgh on Sunday.
He played his freshman year for the Hoosiers under Kelvin Sampson, then interim coach Dan Dakich and was still with the team briefly when replacement Tom Crean arrived. Crawford transferred to Xavier to play for Sean Miller, who left to take the Arizona job, and is now a star for former Xavier assistant Chris Mack.
Bassett was recruited by Mike Davis and played for Sampson before being kicked out of the program by Dakich.
Bassett left for UAB before landing at Ohio. He scored 32 points in the first-round win, but the Bobcats were eliminated by Tennessee on Saturday.
Holloway is the starting point guard for the Musketeers and is averaging 11.7 points and 3.9 assists this season. Ebanks scored 16 points and had 13 rebounds for the Mountaineers in their first-round win and will play Missouri on Sunday.
Another Indiana connection is Saint Mary's Ben Allen, who played at the school from 2005-07. Allen scored six points Saturday in a win over Villanova and the Gaels advanced to the South Regional semifinals.
The Hoosiers have a 16-46 record under Crean, and Crawford said he understands fans' frustration with what happened at Indiana.
``We were so good and then when everybody leaves, people just get so mad that the team's not going to be good no more,'' he said. ``We had to get blamed for it.''
But he said the whispers about attitude problems and dissension among the former Hoosiers were overblown, and he's on a mission to change them this March.
``That's the rep we got,'' Crawford said. ``Now, we're making a new rep.''
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GOOD GREIVIS: Who has 16 points, six assists and seven rebounds in an NCAA tournament win, and then gets asked about his ``off'' night?
Greivis Vasquez of Maryland did. The ACC player of the year posted those numbers in an 89-77 win over Houston on Thursday.
Vasquez is the only player in ACC history to post at least 2,000 points, 700 assists and 600 rebounds in his career, but went 5 of 13 from the field and missed all five of his 3-point attempts.
He scored 12 of his 16 points in the first half and had to chase Aubrey Coleman, the nation's leading scorer, on defense. What would have qualified as a good night for Greivis?
``If he would have shot better, he would have played an unbelievable game because he really got people involved and that's the key,'' Maryland coach Gary Williams said Vasquez. ``He was a great leader.''
Vasquez wasn't even Maryland's main option in the game plan. The Terrapins wanted to go inside often, and freshman Jordan Williams posted career highs with 21 points and 17 rebounds.
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DON'T DRINK THAT: Cornell's players have picked up something of a motto from Kentucky coach John Calipari while playing in Jacksonville, just 75 miles from where a certain famous sports drink was founded.
Cornell is convinced most people are rooting against the school by drinking ``Hater-ade.''
``There's a little bit of Hater-ade out there,'' center Jeff Foote said Saturday. ``Some people don't want to see us succeed because we're the Ivy League school, we're the smart kids, we're not supposed to be good at basketball.
``But a lot of people don't realize how good we are. Whatever. It's extra inspiration for us.''
The Big Red picked up the term from listening to a news conference by Calipari, and Cornell guard Chris Wroblewski tried to explain ``Hater-ade'' in a scientific fashion.
``I believe Hater-ade is something you might either drink or absorb, I guess, that people outside your program might be exposed to,'' he said. ``I think we have proven, though, that we do belong here in the tournament, and hopefully no one is drinking any Hater-ade against us.''
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MIZZOU MATH: Missouri plays Big East champion West Virginia on Sunday, but guard Zaire Taylor said the Big 12 Conference was superior with its seven bids to the NCAA tournament rather than the eight the mega-league received.
``They've got about 30 or 40 teams in that conference,'' Taylor said with a wink. ``And the Big 12 brings seven out of 12. So we're over 50 percent, and they're still around 30 percent.''
Taylor didn't back down when informed his numbers might be a little off, and he left his teammates laughing when asked to chime in.
``I couldn't really top this. Let Zaire have that one,'' Missouri's Keith Ramsey said.
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QUOTABLE: ``It's just a dunk. I don't think it's nothing special about it. I guess dunking on LeBron is a big thing, but everybody gets dunked on.'' - Pittsburgh guard Jermaine Dixon on Xavier's Jordan Crawford's pickup game dunk on the NBA superstar at a camp last summer.
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AP Sports Writers Chris Jenkins in Milwaukee, John Wawrow in Buffalo, N.Y., Mark Long in Jacksonville, Fla., Noah Trister and Jeff Latzke in New Orleans and Associated Press Writer Nicholas K. Geranios in Spokane, Wash. contributed to this report.