Basketball in Hulls’ blood
Hulls gets scholarship offer from IU, where his grandfather was an assistant under Knight
By Chris Korman 331-4353 | ckorman@heraldt.com
May 11, 2008

Joni Hulls considers herself a strict parent.

No late nights for her kids.

But when her son Jordan received an invitation to Assembly Hall shortly after 10 p.m. on Tuesday, she almost pushed him out the door.

“I don’t care if you speed,” she said.

She must have known what awaited Jordan. When he arrived at Assembly Hall a few minutes later, Indiana basketball coach Tom Crean and his staff were waiting for him in the middle of Branch McCracken Court.

The arena was lit up as if there would be a game played later that night, but there was no noise.

This was a solemn moment.

Crean offered Hulls, a 6-0 point guard and Bloomington South junior, a scholarship.

Two days later, the new coach gushed about the experience.

But even he probably could not imagine how much that night meant to the Hulls family.

. . .

A choice to make

A day after Crean’s dramatic offer, Hulls visited Purdue. It did not take long for head coach Matt Painter to offer a scholarship.

Hulls is still hoping to visit Duke — the family has been hearing from Steve Wojciechowski, the 5-11 former Blue Devils point guard and current top assistant — and may take a trip to Stanford, which has shown interest under new head coach Johnny Dawkins, the former Blue Devil.

His teammates are actively trying to persuade him. Byrd, who is headed to Purdue, often sends him text messages reading “Boiler Up!” while Capobianco touts the Indiana program. Mason Plumlee, who was added to the team this year, is headed to Duke.

J.C. and Joni have tried to guide Jordan through the last week. Each of them has met with Crean, hoping to get to know the new coach.

“It feels like Indiana basketball is coming back,” Joni said. “He is the right guy. He is making it what it should be again.”

“I have asked him some very tough questions,” J.C. said. “I’m a businessman, and I want to just get down to it. I don’t deal with flattery. I just want to know where it really stands, and Coach Crean has always been forthright with me.”

J.C. stays in contact with the coaching staffs at Purdue and Indiana so that he can keep Jordan appraised of the situations at each school. Scholarships are limited and Jordan is not the only point guard being courted by either school. There could come a time he will have to make a choice or risk losing the scholarship.

But Jordan does not feel rushed into a decision. He called the process “an equal opportunity thing.”

Coming from him, that term has special meaning. He spent all of those years making sure his teammates would have the opportunity to live out their dreams, believing that what Blackwell told him would come true.

Last Tuesday — long past curfew, on the court his father once swept as a boy — it did.

more via HeraldTimesOnline