College Basketball: Digital Big Ten Preview, #7 Indiana

Let's continue our digital minded journey through the Big Ten Conference, from less best to best. We know these programs are out there, waiting for potential recruits to click in. And we'll see who gets it and who doesn't. Thus far, our tour has shown us #11 Northwestern, #10 Michigan, #9 Ohio State, and #8 Wisconsin.

Here we go.

#7: Indiana

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Coach Crean is a star on Twitter. Deep recruiting content.

Weaknesses: Coach Crean's Twitter is not integrated on the site. No easy ways to follow the program.

Full Scouting Report:

Indiana Basketball. One of the deepest traditions in the Big Ten, with a league-best 35 trips to the Dance - seven more than the Illinois. Clicking into the home page, here, shows you a simple home page.

If you scroll down a little deeper, you see the Hoosier YouTube channel.

Clicking into this section reveals a collection of 34 videos ranging from field hockey to basketball (seriously). It's quite a spread and unfortunately there are no individual channels. So you'll get your field hockey fix alongside your basketball fix. The videos themselves are just ok.

Back to the home page, you notice a Multimedia tab at the top. The content below serves as your gateway to the All-Access area. I'm ready to check it out.

Clicking on this takes you to a detail page. While the content here takes you to a CBS pop up window, there are a couple of interesting things: Daily Practice Reports and Behind the Scenes access. I'm very interested in this content, but if it is true, we really need to find a way to get it surfaced through the site in other areas beyond this one. That's pretty solid stuff! I just love the idea of daily practice reports...

As I move on to check out the basketball content, I was impressed by this menu. There's something about putting all the teams under the headline, "The Hoosiers," that is pretty cool. Let's dive in.

OK, clicking onto Men's Basketball takes you here, where I hope you notice that solid "IU Basketball Recruiting" button. (Very cool!) Let's stop messing around and dive right in...

Now I'm not going to lie and say this is what I envisioned. I wanted something at least a little bit more dynamic. (or dynamic at all I guess). But let's not judge too quickly. Let's explore.

First, we see a Recruiting Guide. Super cool idea. I'm sure most teams put together simple guides for all the players they recruit; this is just the first time I've come across a digital version...

... but clicking in gives you a collection of PDF's. Not exactly what I was hoping for. But the content is here.

Here's an example of the content that lies within each click. Again, this borders on information overload. But at least it offers information to overload on.

I couldn't find any places to follow Indiana online. No Twitter references on the site. Which is extra weird when you see the image below (or on this link)... Head Coach Tom Crean is one of the most active people on Twitter, with over 12,000 followers and a great job of communicating with the world on a daily basis.

I would have liked to see this in the Recruiting area. Or the Multimedia area. Or at least on Coach Crean's bio page. As you can see from the image below, this audience is growing pretty fast but Coach Crean really isn't connected into the Indiana site at all.

Thanks for sticking with us. Come back on tomorrow as we continue through the Big Ten.

Andy