Are you a college student? Are you bored with constantly dominating your intramural games? Are you willing to transfer to a school in Indiana? If so, I have some interesting news for you.
With just two weeks before their conference tournament, and four games left in the regular season, the IUPUI men’s basketball team (2-22; 0-13 in conference) is holding open tryouts. For all you ballers out there who think you can play DI basketball if given the right opportunity, you better get your transfer papers out and get going, because dozens of people are already interested in giving the IUPUI team a shot.
As of a week ago, two days after the IUPUI men’s basketball team tweeted out — and since deleted — that they would be holding open tryouts, there were already about 90 people who had expressed interest in attending the tryout. You can only imagine how that number has grown as more and more national media has picked this story up. Still, nine days after announcing the tryout, head coach Matt Crenshaw has yet to announce a date for those tryouts. According to reports, the team is still waiting to see which players are eligible.
The IUPUI Jaguars have just two wins on the season. The Jaguars started the season 1-0 overall with an exhibition win over Anderson University, a DII program in South Carolina. Since the regular season started though, their only wins have been over Spalding University (DIII) — and East-West University, who has played just two games all year. The 2022 Pomeroy Basketball Rankings currently have IUPUI ranked 358th in Division I — also referred to as dead last. Clearly, the team has several issues it needs to address, but this open tryout is not meant to find a new star, rather just find some people willing to practice with the team’s actual players.
Per Crenshaw, “You have a guy with a torn ACL, you have a guy with a hip that just had hip surgery, and then three of my young men that are playing, three of them are somewhat injured.” Crenshaw claimed that this tryout has nothing to do with his team’s struggles. “The six guys that we have, they’re fighting and they’re doing a tremendous job leaving it all out there, so we’re not really trying to disrupt that,” he said last week. “It’s just more so that we’re looking at somebody so we can truly practice. It’s really just trying to be able to limit their load and put them in situations where we can actually practice to help these young men. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Crenshaw stated that the injuries his team has sustained throughout the year have stunted their ability to practice at the same level they were earlier in the season, and getting back to the routine they had in November and December will go a long way in the team’s ability to bounce back next year.
While the tryouts are open for anyone to come in and give it their best shot, there are still a few hurdles people need to clear if they want to attend. First, they have to be an IUPUI student. That’s obvious. You can’t play on the IUPUI team while attending Maryland. I don’t know why anyone would want to do that. That’d be an awful commute, but yeah, that’s the first requirement. Students will also have to come with a lot of medical information in hand: sickle cell results, indication of a physical performed within the last six months, and health insurance information to name a few.
If you’re an IUPUI student and ever wondered if you had what it takes to play Division I college basketball, why not give it a try. There’s no shame in failing, only in not showing up. As for the IUPUI men’s basketball program, it’s somewhat admirable that they’d be willing to publicly admit that they’re looking for anyone to help them out. It takes a lot for a program to admit something like that, and I hope they get the practice help they need. Who knows? Maybe they’ll find their next star forward in the process.