Abandon Ship

It started as an expected trickle, and it's turning into a flood out of Bloomington. Players are leaving right and left. The 2014-15 Hoosiers will bear little resemblance to their 2013-14 counterpart, and whether that's a good thing has to wait until at least Hoosier Hysteria.

Let's start with the easy and obvious: Will Sheehey, Evan Gordon, Jeff Howard, and the Human Victory Cigar 2.0 (Taylor Wayer) are leaving due to graduation. These guys obviously couldn't be sticking around, and we hope they'll come back and visit sometime.

Then came the unfortunate, but admittedly expected, news that Noah Vonleh would head to the NBA Draft. There was some midseason hope that he might return for year 2, but once his game got back on track, and word came down that he would be a top 10 pick pretty easily, he was gone. We wish him luck at the next level.

Recently, a wave of transfers has also hit the program. On Monday alone, we heard that Austin Etherington, Jeremy Hollowell, and Jonny Marlin were seeking transfers, and that Joe Fagan would not be returning to instead focus on his studies. Tuesday added rumors that Andrew Calomeris would also be transferring.

Thus, of the 17 people currently listed with numbers on iuhoosiers.com right now, only 7 of those players are still currently with the program, and it's still only March. Those 7 (Troy Williams, Yogi Ferrell, Hanner Mosquera-Perea, Devin Davis, Stanford Robinson, Colin Hartman, and Peter Jurkin) plus Robert Johnson, Max Hoetzel, and James Blackmon, Jr. represent what we can currently call next year's Hoosiers.

With luck, Coach Crean and his staff will be able to find some talent that can work towards replacing those players, and getting someone experienced like Anthony Lee would be a great start, and build the program back to where we thought it was.