Video: ScoopTalk

After each Indiana football and basketball game and on other occasions where there is breaking news, we shoot a video from a laptop webcam. Some of the better ones follow.

Series: The Rise, The Fall, The Rebirth? Part 1: The Day JMU Basketball Changed

This was the first part of a six-part series detailing the rise and fall of the James Madison basketball program. It won first place in the Virginia Press Association for sports news story and third place in the United States Basketball Writers Association Writing Contest in the Investigative/Enterprise Category. This is the introductory piece.

HARRISONBURG – No one saw it coming. Certainly not Lefty Driesell .

The celebrated James Madison University basketball coach was driving with his wife, Joyce, to their vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del. It was March 5, 1997, just two days after his Dukes had lost an overtime heartbreaker to Old Dominion in the Colonial Athletic Association championship game.

Driesell had already received oral commitments for both of JMU’s available scholarships and, with nothing pressing on his schedule, the 66-year-old Tidewater native was looking forward to some hard-earned time off.

But that was when the call came. The one that changed everything.

Series: The Rise, The Fall, The Rebirth? Part 2: Thanks to Lou, Pressure Built

This was the first part of a six-part series detailing the rise and fall of the James Madison basketball program. It won first place in the Virginia Press Association for sports news story and third place in the United States Basketball Writers Association Writing Contest in the Investigative/Enterprise Category. This is Part 2, which focuses on the Lou Campanelli years.

 

HARRISONBURG – Twelve years. That’s all it took for the James Madison men’s basketball program to go from baby to bracket buster.

In 1969, Madison College’s club squad was awarded varsity status and, by 1981, JMU was celebrating mid-major euphoria, winning a first-round NCAA Tournament game with an upset of a big-league opponent. It became a trend, with the Dukes pulling off stunners the next two years, too.

There were no real setbacks. No suffering. Just a meteoric rise from virtual non-existence to national recognition and respectability.

JM-Who, indeed.

Series: The Rise, The Fall, The Rebirth?, Part 3: JMU, Lefty, A Soured Romance

This was the first part of a six-part series detailing the rise and fall of the James Madison basketball program. It won first place in the Virginia Press Association for sports news story and third place in the United States Basketball Writers Association Writing Contest in the Investigative/Enterprise Category. This story is about the Lefty Driesell years and his somewhat surprising departure.

HARRISONBURG – Lefty Driesell swears that all is forgiven, that ending up at Georgia State was the best thing that could have happened to him and that he doesn’t hold any grudges for being fired by James Madison University in 1997 on the cusp of his 700th career victory.

But when initially asked this summer to comment on his nine-year tenure at JMU, his words betrayed at least a small bruise.

Series: The Rise, The Fall, The Rebirth? Part 4: Changing World Changes Dukes

This was the first part of a six-part series detailing the rise and fall of the James Madison basketball program. It won first place in the Virginia Press Association for sports news story and third place in the United States Basketball Writers Association Writing Contest in the Investigative/Enterprise Category. This part is about the changes in the college basketball landscape since the Lou Campanelli years.

 

HARRISONBURG – With Lefty Driesell , James Madison didn’t have to worry about finding a niche in the changing recruiting landscape. It didn’t really matter that the school was nearly two hours from a major city or that the nearest beach was four hours distant or that the area’s black population was tiny, all detriments to recruiting. Neither did it really matter that JMU’s home base was largely barren of Division I basketball talent.

“His personality,” former JMU president Ronald E. Carrier said, “was big enough to overcome all of that.”

Series: The Rise, The Fall, The Rebirth? Part 5: A Hero’s Unsuccessful Return

This was the first part of a six-part series detailing the rise and fall of the James Madison basketball program. It won first place in the Virginia Press Association for sports news story and third place in the United States Basketball Writers Association Writing Contest in the Investigative/Enterprise Category. This part is about the Sherman Dillard years and the program’s downfall.

 

HARRISONBURG – Put yourself behind former James Madison president Ronald E. Carrier’s desk in 1997 when Sherman Dillard came to interview for the school’s men’s basketball coaching job.

Dillard was intelligent, articulate, ambitious and dressed impeccably, exactly what an applicant for any job is supposed to be.

And his resume was strong. Although his record in three years at Indiana State was shaky (29-52), he inherited a program that was 4-24 the year before he arrived at Terre Haute, and the Sycamores improved every season during his tenure there.

Series: The Rise, The Fall, The Rebirth? Part 6: Lots of Losses, But Still Hope

This was the first part of a six-part series detailing the rise and fall of the James Madison basketball program. It won first place in the Virginia Press Association for sports news story and third place in the United States Basketball Writers Association Writing Contest in the Investigative/Enterprise Category. This part is about the Dean Keener era, which was heading into its second year at the time. Keener would later resign, apparently under pressure, just before the end of his fourth season.

HARRISONBURG – He’s 11-45 and he’s never won more than three conference games in a season. He’s produced two of the three worst seasons in James Madison basketball history, and his teams have never come close to advancing past the first day of the Colonial Athletic Association tournament.

Yet, that hasn’t cost Dean Keener any points with the people who built JMU basketball or with those who oversee it now. He’s impressed the program’s storied coaches, Lou Campanelli and Lefty Driesell , as well as current and past administrators.

Baseball’s power numbers down with implementation of new bats

This is a story about the implementation of new bat standards in college baseball and its effect on power numbers. 

Jake Naumann’s fastball had no business surviving.

The Evansville right-hander threw a 2-0 meatball down the middle of the plate to an All-American, the Big Ten’s reigning Player of the Year and triple crown winner.

Mistakes like that were the reason Alex Dickerson hit 24 home runs last year, and why he sits five home runs short of Indiana’s career record of 47.

“A year ago, for the most part, that ball goes out,” Dickerson said.

But times have changed and most importantly in this case, so have the bats. College baseball is beginning a new era, and this was Sembower Field’s introduction to it.

Dickerson hit that pitch in the Hoosiers’ home opener on March 27 just slightly less than square. However, with a bat much less lively than the one he was using a year ago, it was enough to keep the pitch in the yard. His drive to right center caromed off the wall for a two-run double rather than clear it for a three-run homer.

Hoosiers training for NFL Combine

This is an enterprise story about the combine training graduated IU players were going through in preparation for the NFL Draft. The purpose of the story was to talk less about the players involved than the process, down to how the training is paid for.

Link to original

When the trainers at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., presented Rodger Saffold with the idea of vision training, he didn’t see the point.

Vision training? Seriously? Wasn’t preparing for the NFL Draft supposed to be about bench press reps, agility drills and 40 times? What did his eyes have to do with anything?

Madison: Winning Equals Money

This story is an enterprise pieces about rising salaries in Colonial Athletic Association basketball and what it would take for James Madison to be able to pay its coach at a level similar to what George Mason was paying Jim Larrnaga and VCU was paying Anthony Grant.

 

HARRISONBURG – If Dean Keener turns around the James Madison basketball program – taking the Dukes to the NCAA Tournament and pulling off an upset or two, a la conference mates George Mason and Virginia Commonwealth – could JMU pay its coach the kind of money the Patriots and Rams are giving Jim Larranaga and Anthony Grant ?

Apparently so.

Even though Madison has a Division I-AA football program that soaks up much of the school’s sports budget, athletic director Jeff Bourne said JMU would have the resources – and the will – to match the $375,000 base salary that Mason’s Larranaga receives and the $400,000 VCU’s Grant earns.