IU players

Despite the accolades and compliments, the 18-year-old has kept his focus: “I try not to pay too much attention to that stuff.”

If his NBA career doesn’t pan out for some reason, former Hoosier basketball star Victor Oladipo may find a niche for himself in the recording studio.

Two IU players put up big numbers, as sophomore Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell and senior Will Sheehey scored 15 points apiece in the win.

Oladipo’s experience was not without its hiccups. An NBA handler directed him to take off the eye-gear before the main televised event.

Victor Oladipo became only the sixth player in IU history to be selected with one of the first two picks in the draft.

Forget the NBA mock drafts and IU fan sites. Amid the speculation about whether Cody Zeller will go pro or stay in school, your best source may be the Amish guy who installed my dad’s windows.

Okay, so the Hoosiers didn’t finish their exciting 2012–13 season on the high note IU fans had hoped for. No need to belabor that point.

But do his moves hold up off the court? You decide—here’s a two-year-old video of Oladipo, in a country-clubby cardigan, performing at an IU event as a freshman, making a suave through-the-crowd entrance and crooning the R&B singer’s “U Got It Bad.”

Legendary coach Bob Knight, Victor Oladipo, and Cody Zeller have all landed on the iconic weekly magazine’s cover, recently and over time. See the best of the rest IU basketball SI covers over the years.

Usually we can’t take our eyes off of Victor Oladipo, but today we couldn’t help wondering which lucky kids got the honor of surrounding him on the Sports Illustrated cover. Dustin Dopirak of The Hoosier Scoop tells us that most of the covermates are IU athletes, and tweets from IU athletic departments confirmed the appearance of baseball, soccer, football, and volleyball players and a (swollen-eyed) wrestler.

Oladipo threw down a huge dunk at Chicago’s United Center against a Fighting Illini squad that simply watched (presumably in amazement) from midcourt.

The Big Ten’s first African-American player to appear in a game marks the 65th anniversary of his not-so-subtle feat.

As the season begins Friday at Assembly Hall, not only are fans excited, but so are former players. With so many talented and experienced athletes on this year’s squad, look for IU to try a lot of different lineups early in the season. Here are a few things that I and my fellow former Hoosiers talk about when we’re discussing how far this team can go.

Everyone remembers the shot. IU down by one. Six ticks left. Jumper, 16 feet out, Keith Smart fading, fading left to the baseline. There’s a lot of catching up to do. Here’s what Smart and his teammates are up to now.

Yogi brings so many things—his change of speed, change of direction, his ability to shoot the three, his ability to play in transition, his ability to shoot the pull-up. Now he’s adding the ability to explode around people, and he’ll continue to get better at that.