Next season notes

The biggest news for Indiana basketball is that 7-1 Guy-Marc Michel will be on campus this fall. As with most Juco big men, it'd be prudent to suspect his conditioning, and his ability to hold on to the ball, until we see otherwise. However, this pick-up seems to be in a different category than the Tijan Jobe pick-up. Michel was being recruited by other power-conference teams and appears to have some offensive ability inside, and should be even more helpful on defense. I wouldn't expect him to start, but he could be a reliable bench contributor.

Indiana will play at Boston College in the ACC-Big Ten challenge. That's probably a loss on the road. BC was mediocre last year, but was looking to make a quantum jump forward before coach Al Skinner got inexplicably fired. Now, a couple of key players for the season have transferred, no recruits are coming in, and their NCAA hopes are doubtful again. They are probably a NIT team, but they'll be hosting Indiana- who'll be in the NIT at best.

In the good news department, the Indiana Men Basketball team's GPA for last season was 3.16. At least they were succeeding in the classroom, which has not been a place for Hoosier success in a few years.

Brent Yarina of the Big Ten Network put together a power poll that I basically agree with. I might bump Wisconsin up a spot or two, but I don't feel that strongly about it. IU's ranked 8th, by the way.

A decent thinking-through of next year's top 25 can be found here. I think it's fairly justifiable, but I would put money on Duke not repeating. I think Michigan State is the most likely for national champ next season. However, I do think Ohio State is pretty over-rated here. Matta's great, but he lost point guard options 1,2, and 3, and three-point opportunities will have to come off the passes of a freshman post-player. Look for turnovers to uncharacteriscally hurt OSU next year.