IU’s frontcourt got a little deeper and maybe a bit tougher Wednesday.
IU Coach Tom Crean announced that Jordan Fuchs, a 6-foot-6 tight end for the football team, has been added to the men’s basketball roster effective immediately. He traveled with the team to Maryland and will wear the No. 20.
“Jordan is someone we’ve been aware of for some time now and had he not gotten injured in the Purdue game and had to recover from that we would have brought over to evaluate earlier,” Crean said in a release. “We worked with him since last week and with Coach (Kevin) Wilson’s blessing we are adding Jordan at this time. He has considerable basketball experience and brings size, athleticism, toughness and a tremendous competitive attitude.”
Fuchs appeared in all 12 games for IU football this season. He caught three passes for 31 yards and scored a touchdown at Memorial Stadium against North Texas.
A 2-star basketball prospect by ESPN with scholarship offers from Iowa State, SMU and Florida among others, Fuchs averaged 11.7 points and 6.4 rebounds per game while shooting 52.6 percent from the field as a senior at Christ the King High School in New York.
Fuchs didn’t even play football until his junior year of high school, but quickly excelled in the sport thanks to his length and athleticism. He wound up choosing football over basketball and spent a season at Milford Academy in New England to fine-tune his skills on the gridiron.
He initially signed with Connecticut to play football coming out of high school but decommitted Nov. 1, 2013, in favor of committing to Rutgers.
Fuchs then decided to visit IU one month later and wound up decommitting from the Scarlet Knights and committing to Wilson’s Hoosiers with the knowledge that he could also find a spot on Crean’s basketball team.
That potential spot has since come to fruition.
Although two-sport athletes are now fewer and farther in-between, this isn’t the first time Crean has found players in neighboring athletic facilities. In his first season in Bloomington, baseball players Kipp Schutz and Eric Arnett spent time on the team with Schutz playing in six games.
The last football-basketball crossover player was James Hardy, who played basketball as a freshman before opting to play football exclusively. That decision paid off for Hardy, who set program records at IU before spending two seasons in the NFL.
Perhaps the most successful crossover athlete IU has had in recent years was Antwaan Randle El who actually played football, basketball and baseball as a Hoosier. He went on to catch 370 passes for 4,467 yards in the NFL playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Washington Redskins.
Just how much Fuchs will play remains to be seen. He’ll join a group of Hoosier forwards plagued by inconsistency and injury this season.
Tonight’s game against Maryland tips off at 9 p.m. and will be broadcasted on the Big Ten Network.
Sam Beishuizen
