Bassett re-uniting with DavisFormer Hoosier to join coach who recruited him to IU at UABBy Chris Korman 331-4353 | ckorman@heraldt.com
July 9, 2008 Armon Bassett committed to Mike Davis again on Monday night.
This time, he might even get to play for him.
Bassett, who was a third team All-Big Ten selection as a sophomore, called the former Hoosiers and current UAB coach to say that he had decided to resurrect his college career with the Blazers.
“I’m excited to be in that system with Coach Davis,” Bassett said Tuesday while he was in Bloomington visiting with friends. “I’ll be in attack mode. I think I’ll have a chance to show parts of my game I didn’t get to show at Indiana.”
Bassett, who led the Big Ten in 3-point shooting percentage (45.4), said that he chose UAB because the offensive freedom would allow him to show professional scouts his diversity.
“I watched the NBA draft closely this year and saw what types of players went where,” he said. “I noticed that they wanted players who could score and attack and do the little things, and I have a chance to do that at UAB.”
He won’t be eligible until the 2009-10 season, and could end up playing that year with one of the top recruits in the country, DeMarcus Cousins. Considered the No. 6 player (and top center) in the class by Scout.com, the 6-foot-9 Cousins has committed to play for Davis despite interest from practically every major program in the country.
“We expect to have a top 10, top 15 recruiting class that year,” Bassett said. “And we expect to compete with Memphis for the Conference-USA title. That’s obviously the goal. We have a chance to build something special there.”
Bassett said he is not in basketball shape now. He has worked out mostly on his own since being dismissed from the basketball team by interim coach Dan Dakich on March 31. He was allowed to work out with the rest of the team for about three weeks, he said, after Tom Crean was named coach.
But Crean ultimately announced that he would not reinstate Bassett, who had been in trouble with Dakich for refusing to run as a punishment for being late to an appointment.
Bassett said that by the time Crean made his decision, he had already decided to leave Indiana.
“Every time I tried to talk about what happened last season,” he said, “I got this feeling in my stomach. I couldn’t eat for days.”
A former star at Terre Haute South, Bassett said he cherished the opportunity to play basketball at Indiana. And he realizes that his departure — which came amidst calls by both Dakich and Crean for “culture change” within the team — had left his reputation scarred.
“To all the fans who have questioned me, I’d just want to sit down with them one-on-one and talk to them and answer any questions they have,” he said. “I’m a reserved person and maybe I was misunderstood. But I think 99 percent of the people would see that I’m a good kid.”
Bassett had considered West Virginia, Cincinnati, Texas A&M and Arkansas before opting to reunite, in a sense, with the coach who originally recruited him to IU but never coached him.
Bassett will spend the rest of the summer traveling between Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Las Vegas training with pro players and various coaches.
http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2008/07/09/iusports.qp-6544424.sto
