Bloomington Native Thrilled To Be Wearing the Cream and Crimson
10/9/2017 2:51:00 PM | Men's Basketball
By Andy Graham, IUHoosiers.com
BLOOMINGTON, Indiana - Among Indiana's tabernacles dedicated to the unofficial state religion, perhaps none awes congregants at first sight quite like Indiana University's Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
"The first time you walk in there, you go, 'Wow! This is like a cathedral,'" Johnny Jager said this week. "You just want to be part of it. So ever since I can remember, I wanted to do that."
For a long while, growing up in Bloomington, Jager did his part through adding his voice to those of thousands in the stands cheering on the host Hoosiers.
But Jager has another role now.
And he gained a new perspective last Nov. 30 after taking his place on the Hoosier bench.
"The North Carolina game last year was really amazing," Jager recalled of IU's 76-67 victory over the No. 3-ranked Tar Heels, who would go on to win the NCAA title. "It was definitely surreal.
"When you're up in the Assembly Hall stands and it's rocking, you go, 'Man, this is sweet.' But when you're on the bench, on the floor, and can look up and see the whole stadium jacked, with all that noise pouring down on you, it's totally different. It gives you cold chills. It's the greatest. It solidified in my mind that this is the greatest place for college basketball in the country."
And Jager feels his current place within IU's basketball program is pretty great, too.
Jager, who plans to pursue a coaching career, is now getting guidance from a second Division I staff in as many years, with Archie Miller's crew having taken over from Tom Crean's at Indiana.
And that's after a season with Kyle Brummett's staff at Wabash College, and four years starting for Bloomington High School South's J.R. Holmes, a Hall of Famer who could end up with more coaching victories than anybody in Hoosier high school history.
Jager was coming off an impressive campaign at Wabash – averaging 15.5 points and 5.5 assists as a freshman point guard – when he contacted the Hoosier staff last summer about returning home to prepare for an eventual coaching career.
But Jager had another motive. The 2015 Bloomington Herald-Times Area Player of the Year wasn't anywhere near ready to hang up his sneakers. And he wanted to fulfill a lifelong dream.
"Once we knew this was something he really wanted, and what he was giving up (at Wabash), we were on board with him, said Crean."
Jager, as an invited walk-on, now feels doubly blessed to be on board.
"I've been very, very lucky to have had such great coaches to learn from," Jager said. "It's going to help me. I know it will. I get to learn from Coach Miller now and I had a whole year with Coach Crean. Learning from both guys, well, it's just huge for me in terms of what I want to do in the future.
"Coach Crean didn't have to let me join the team, but he did. He wanted me to learn the ropes about big-time college basketball, but also wanted my experience to be good. I appreciate him and his family so much for that. He made my dream come true, to be part of Indiana basketball and then, hopefully, making a career out of it."
And Jager couldn't be any more excited and grateful about now having Miller as a mentor.
"One impression I definitely get around here right now is that everybody is really excited about Archie, about Coach," Jager said. "People are always saying, 'Oh, I hear such good things about Coach,' and the thing I can tell them is, 'Everything that you've heard is true.' I can verify it.
"He's just very good at what he does. He knows what he's doing. High basketball IQ. Ask anybody who talks to the guy. He knows the game. Knows the ins and outs of every single position at all times. He's an inviting guy, always willing to talk, but very business-like. He's straight to the facts. He's step A, B, C, D, get it done as quickly as possible and as perfectly as possible. Very efficient."
Jager's gratitude and excitement extends to Miller's on-court staff, assistant coaches Bruiser Flint and Ed Schilling and associate head coach Tom Ostrom. And Jager isn't alone in that regard.
"I think every one of us players has been impressed with the whole staff," Jager said. "Coach Bruiser is a great guy to be around because he's funny, he's outgoing, but he knows what he's talking about, too. He's been a head coach (at Drexel and Massachusetts, and a four-time Colonial Athletic Association Coach of the Year).
"Coach Schilling was a great high school coach here in Indiana (winning back-to-back state titles with Yogi Ferrell at Park Tudor) and then was an assistant at UCLA (with Steve Alford). He does a lot of the guard work, so I'm with him a lot. Every single day, we start practice with ball-handling and guard skills. Coach Ostrom just does everything. He oversees everything."
Jager is also enamored of the people populating IU's player roster, and he thinks every Hoosier fan would be, too.
"I think everybody would be so thankful if they really knew how good a group of guys this team is," Jager said. "There is not one rotten tomato in the group. They are all 'team guys.' And every single one of the guys likes hanging out with every single other guy on the team. That's a blessing."
Jager, who sat out last season as a redshirt, is a sophomore in terms of eligibility. But he agreed with fifth-year senior Collin Hartman's recent observation that all the Hoosiers are rookies in the sense that they're learning new things from a new staff.
And Jager figures a lot of Hoosier fans will relish hearing that the primary emphasis in practice so far has involved defense.
Miller deploys his sophisticated version of "pack line" man-to-man defense pioneered by Dick Bennett in Wisconsin. Hoosier fans raised on Bob Knight's incorporation of zone principles within a man-to-man structure will likely grow to appreciate its attributes.
"In practice, we do so much defense," Jager said. "We work on defense more than anything, by quite a margin. We've worked on this defense more than any defense I've been involved with in my life. I've already learned so much.
"It's the primary focus, because defense travels to every game. Offense comes and goes. We're not always going to make shots at the same rate. But we can always pack our defense with us. We've got to make sure we're up to par on that every single time we take the floor."
The other main emphasis from Miller and his staff so far? Limiting turnovers on offense. (Hoosier fans will like the sound of that, too.) If that doesn't happen in practice, the players pay a price.
"We've been a team that has had high turnovers in the past," Jager acknowledged. "Now we have turnover limits for each squad in each practice, and if you go beyond that, you're running for each and every single turnover past that limit. It's hard on us but good for us at the same time."
Jager, who transitioned from 3-point specialist to point guard while at South, knows all about the need to value the ball. But he can score it, too.
During his only season at Wabash, he tallied 31 points in the first meeting against arch-rival DePauw. Then he topped that with 32 in the next meeting.
Has Jager let Coach Miller know that, when playing for a red-and-white team against a black-and-gold arch-rival, he tends to excel?
"No, I haven't told him that, but I hope maybe he saw that somewhere," Jager said laughing. "But, or course, this is two or three or more notches up from that, competitively. I just want to have him see what he needs to see from me in practice right now.
"He wants my role to be competing every single day. And that means whenever my number is called upon, whether it's two plays or five minutes or whatever, he wants 110 percent from me every single time. And pushing everybody else on the floor to be better."
Jager suspects that the Hoosiers on the floor will fare better than some of the preseason magazines have prognosticated, most picking IU near the tail end of the Big Ten's middle of the pack. He knows it might take some time for the team to fully jell with its new staff's stratagems, but doesn't mind a bit if it turns out the Hoosiers were underestimated.
"That's totally OK with us, because we're not focused on any of the preseason rankings or projections," he said. "We're just focused on us right now, on us getting better each and every day.
"We're just trying to get at least one thing better each day and then hopefully, by the end of the season, we are where we want to be."
Jager's already there in a sense. Back in Bloomington. Acting as a font of local knowledge for his teammates (he knows where the best ice cream can be found). Living his dream.
"You kind of get into the routine of going into Assembly Hall and Cook Hall every single day to work," he said, "and at some points might start taking it for granted a little bit.
"But other times in practice, you gaze off a little bit, even though you're not supposed to, you step back and say, 'Holy cow. I'm really here right now. This is real life."
BLOOMINGTON, Indiana - Among Indiana's tabernacles dedicated to the unofficial state religion, perhaps none awes congregants at first sight quite like Indiana University's Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
"The first time you walk in there, you go, 'Wow! This is like a cathedral,'" Johnny Jager said this week. "You just want to be part of it. So ever since I can remember, I wanted to do that."
For a long while, growing up in Bloomington, Jager did his part through adding his voice to those of thousands in the stands cheering on the host Hoosiers.
But Jager has another role now.
And he gained a new perspective last Nov. 30 after taking his place on the Hoosier bench.
"The North Carolina game last year was really amazing," Jager recalled of IU's 76-67 victory over the No. 3-ranked Tar Heels, who would go on to win the NCAA title. "It was definitely surreal.
"When you're up in the Assembly Hall stands and it's rocking, you go, 'Man, this is sweet.' But when you're on the bench, on the floor, and can look up and see the whole stadium jacked, with all that noise pouring down on you, it's totally different. It gives you cold chills. It's the greatest. It solidified in my mind that this is the greatest place for college basketball in the country."
And Jager feels his current place within IU's basketball program is pretty great, too.
Jager, who plans to pursue a coaching career, is now getting guidance from a second Division I staff in as many years, with Archie Miller's crew having taken over from Tom Crean's at Indiana.
And that's after a season with Kyle Brummett's staff at Wabash College, and four years starting for Bloomington High School South's J.R. Holmes, a Hall of Famer who could end up with more coaching victories than anybody in Hoosier high school history.
Jager was coming off an impressive campaign at Wabash – averaging 15.5 points and 5.5 assists as a freshman point guard – when he contacted the Hoosier staff last summer about returning home to prepare for an eventual coaching career.
But Jager had another motive. The 2015 Bloomington Herald-Times Area Player of the Year wasn't anywhere near ready to hang up his sneakers. And he wanted to fulfill a lifelong dream.
"Once we knew this was something he really wanted, and what he was giving up (at Wabash), we were on board with him, said Crean."
Jager, as an invited walk-on, now feels doubly blessed to be on board.
"I've been very, very lucky to have had such great coaches to learn from," Jager said. "It's going to help me. I know it will. I get to learn from Coach Miller now and I had a whole year with Coach Crean. Learning from both guys, well, it's just huge for me in terms of what I want to do in the future.
"Coach Crean didn't have to let me join the team, but he did. He wanted me to learn the ropes about big-time college basketball, but also wanted my experience to be good. I appreciate him and his family so much for that. He made my dream come true, to be part of Indiana basketball and then, hopefully, making a career out of it."And Jager couldn't be any more excited and grateful about now having Miller as a mentor.
"One impression I definitely get around here right now is that everybody is really excited about Archie, about Coach," Jager said. "People are always saying, 'Oh, I hear such good things about Coach,' and the thing I can tell them is, 'Everything that you've heard is true.' I can verify it.
"He's just very good at what he does. He knows what he's doing. High basketball IQ. Ask anybody who talks to the guy. He knows the game. Knows the ins and outs of every single position at all times. He's an inviting guy, always willing to talk, but very business-like. He's straight to the facts. He's step A, B, C, D, get it done as quickly as possible and as perfectly as possible. Very efficient."
Jager's gratitude and excitement extends to Miller's on-court staff, assistant coaches Bruiser Flint and Ed Schilling and associate head coach Tom Ostrom. And Jager isn't alone in that regard.
"I think every one of us players has been impressed with the whole staff," Jager said. "Coach Bruiser is a great guy to be around because he's funny, he's outgoing, but he knows what he's talking about, too. He's been a head coach (at Drexel and Massachusetts, and a four-time Colonial Athletic Association Coach of the Year).
"Coach Schilling was a great high school coach here in Indiana (winning back-to-back state titles with Yogi Ferrell at Park Tudor) and then was an assistant at UCLA (with Steve Alford). He does a lot of the guard work, so I'm with him a lot. Every single day, we start practice with ball-handling and guard skills. Coach Ostrom just does everything. He oversees everything."
Jager is also enamored of the people populating IU's player roster, and he thinks every Hoosier fan would be, too.
"I think everybody would be so thankful if they really knew how good a group of guys this team is," Jager said. "There is not one rotten tomato in the group. They are all 'team guys.' And every single one of the guys likes hanging out with every single other guy on the team. That's a blessing."
Jager, who sat out last season as a redshirt, is a sophomore in terms of eligibility. But he agreed with fifth-year senior Collin Hartman's recent observation that all the Hoosiers are rookies in the sense that they're learning new things from a new staff.
And Jager figures a lot of Hoosier fans will relish hearing that the primary emphasis in practice so far has involved defense.
Miller deploys his sophisticated version of "pack line" man-to-man defense pioneered by Dick Bennett in Wisconsin. Hoosier fans raised on Bob Knight's incorporation of zone principles within a man-to-man structure will likely grow to appreciate its attributes.
"In practice, we do so much defense," Jager said. "We work on defense more than anything, by quite a margin. We've worked on this defense more than any defense I've been involved with in my life. I've already learned so much.
"It's the primary focus, because defense travels to every game. Offense comes and goes. We're not always going to make shots at the same rate. But we can always pack our defense with us. We've got to make sure we're up to par on that every single time we take the floor."
The other main emphasis from Miller and his staff so far? Limiting turnovers on offense. (Hoosier fans will like the sound of that, too.) If that doesn't happen in practice, the players pay a price.
"We've been a team that has had high turnovers in the past," Jager acknowledged. "Now we have turnover limits for each squad in each practice, and if you go beyond that, you're running for each and every single turnover past that limit. It's hard on us but good for us at the same time."Jager, who transitioned from 3-point specialist to point guard while at South, knows all about the need to value the ball. But he can score it, too.
During his only season at Wabash, he tallied 31 points in the first meeting against arch-rival DePauw. Then he topped that with 32 in the next meeting.
Has Jager let Coach Miller know that, when playing for a red-and-white team against a black-and-gold arch-rival, he tends to excel?
"No, I haven't told him that, but I hope maybe he saw that somewhere," Jager said laughing. "But, or course, this is two or three or more notches up from that, competitively. I just want to have him see what he needs to see from me in practice right now.
"He wants my role to be competing every single day. And that means whenever my number is called upon, whether it's two plays or five minutes or whatever, he wants 110 percent from me every single time. And pushing everybody else on the floor to be better."
Jager suspects that the Hoosiers on the floor will fare better than some of the preseason magazines have prognosticated, most picking IU near the tail end of the Big Ten's middle of the pack. He knows it might take some time for the team to fully jell with its new staff's stratagems, but doesn't mind a bit if it turns out the Hoosiers were underestimated.
"That's totally OK with us, because we're not focused on any of the preseason rankings or projections," he said. "We're just focused on us right now, on us getting better each and every day.
"We're just trying to get at least one thing better each day and then hopefully, by the end of the season, we are where we want to be."
Jager's already there in a sense. Back in Bloomington. Acting as a font of local knowledge for his teammates (he knows where the best ice cream can be found). Living his dream.
"You kind of get into the routine of going into Assembly Hall and Cook Hall every single day to work," he said, "and at some points might start taking it for granted a little bit.
"But other times in practice, you gaze off a little bit, even though you're not supposed to, you step back and say, 'Holy cow. I'm really here right now. This is real life."
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