IU still in PF Stephan Van Treese’s top five after last week’s meeting with Crean

[CalebMaxson]

Last Monday 6’9”, 225 lb power forward Stephan Van Treese finally got to sit down with IU coach Tom Crean and talk about his potential future here at IU. This afternoon IUplanet finally caught up with the power forward for a brief interview about the meeting and where IU now stands with him.

Van Treese met Crean face-to-face for the first time last week

The rising senior at Lawrence North High School in Indianapolis has long been in the sights of many Hoosier fans as a must-have 2009 prospect, but last week’s meeting was the very first time that Crean actually had the chance to sit down with the three-star player and get to know him.

The visit left Van Treese with a good impression of IU and helped keep the Hoosier program firmly in his top five schools, which consist of IU, Kansas, UCLA, Louisville, and Ohio State.

“Really I just got to know him and his staff,” said Van Treese about his first meeting in person with the Hoosier coach. “We went to lunch, and we talked, and he showed me some film on how he’d use me and whatnot. We just really got to know each other.”

About his initial impression of Crean, he said, “he’s very personable. He’s different from other coaches, he’s not the same.” The newly established relationship between player and coaching staff will be extremely important if IU hopes to bring Van Treese to Bloomington. He stated that above all the coaching staff was probably the biggest factor in his decision. “Definitely, the coaches, I’m just trying to get to know them all, because I’m going to be spending four years with them.”

Van Treese still has one more visit to take to UCLA this Thursday. He’ll then come back for the Adidas Take Five Classic in Cincinnati, the Kentucky Hoopfest, and the Adidas Super 64 in Las Vegas before heading to Nationals in Orlando.

He said that the AAU season has been going “pretty well,” but he has higher expectations for the rest of the summer. “I think we should have won a couple tournaments that we lost. We should have definitely won the Kansas [City] one. I’m hoping we come out with at least two or three of our remaining tournaments.”

Discuss it in the forums

[Clark357]

It's interesting that he doesn't have a scholarship offer from IU yet. I'd personally rather have Roger Franklin, but if SVT can show next month that he's the real deal, he would be a good addition as well.

[IUBalla512]

This guy can play, it's just a matter of him showing that he's willing to buy into Crean being here!

[dwates37]

If he's still around during/after the basketball season and we still have our scholarship, i bet we take a stab at him. We won't be picking anyone else up for this year, though.