5-star guard Darius Garland commits to Vanderbilt over Indiana

It’s been a rough 72 hours to start Archie Miller’s first regular season at Indiana. A historic beatdown at the hands of a mediocre Indiana State team started the weekend Friday, a Juwan Morgan injury came on Sunday in an unexpectedly close game against Howard.

Now, perhaps a loss far more damaging — or at least disappointing — than any other to come at Archie Miller’s first season at the helm at Indiana.

In an interview given to ESPN’s Paul Biancardi, 5-star guard Darius Garland has committed to hometown Vanderbilt over Indiana. Here’s from the Biancardi piece that just dropped around Noon ET this afternoon:

"This was the best fit for me and my family. I can have the best of both worlds in academics and basketball at Vanderbilt. Someday the ball will stop bouncing and I want to prepare myself for that situation. My family put me in position to be successful so I want them to see me play as much as possible," Garland told ESPN.

Garland was set to make a decision at 3:30 ET at Brentwood Academy, his high school, in Nashville this afternoon — so the early announcement to ESPN comes at some sort of a surprise.

This is a big blow for Indiana. And for reasons that go beyond Garland.

After Hoosier Hysteria, all signs seemed to point that Darius Garland and New Albany 5-star Romeo Langford would be very possibly heading to Bloomington. Heck, look at this dumb headline!

Instead, now, Garland — who was born in northwest Indiana and knew Bryce drew from his days at Valparaiso — going to spend a nice amount of time trying to recruit his close friend Langford, according to Biancardi’s piece.

But, either one of two things happened: People were violently wrong about what a 17-year-old was going to do, or a teenager changed his mind. It happens.

We’ll update this story with more information as it comes.