February 3rd Meetup Details and BHN Crossover Pod

A quick update from Jerod on the details for our February 3rd meetup in Bloomington, plus a link to a crossover episode between Jerod and Galen on CrimsonCast.

Hello my fellow Hoosier friends.

I hope you are enjoying this “bye week” for the Indiana men’s basketball team. It really did seem to come at the right time for both the team and the fan base, and hopefully all will be rejuvenated come Saturday in Champaign.

We’ll be back with a new episode of AC Radio tomorrow night, most likely discussing the aspects of the team’s play to pay the closest attention to down the stretch — even if the NCAA (or even NIT) Tournament never becomes a legit possibility.

As disappointing and unacceptable as that would be, it certainly doesn’t mean the rest of the games are meaningless. Far from it. Mike Woodson is trying to rebuild the foundation that exited when Trayce, Miller, Race, and Jalen moved on, and what happens over these next six weeks could go a long way toward doing so.

Anyway, that’s to come on Thursday.

In this short email update, I will share the details of our February 3rd meetup in Bloomington and provide the link to crossover podcast episode I recorded yesterday with Galen from

CrimsonCast

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February 3rd meetup in Bloomington!

As we do every year, the four regular hosts of The Assembly Call will be converging on Bloomington for a weekend Big Ten battle.

This year, it’s the February 3rd home game against Penn State — a date we chose before the season even started.

And boy do we know how to pick ‘em! It’s the one game remaining on the schedule that KenPom gives IU a greater-than-50% chance to win. :-)

We’ll be attending the game and then heading to Upstairs Pub on Kirkwood for the postgame show, raffle, and afterparty, which is being sponsored by Hard Truth Distillery, based in Nashville, IN. (It’s the same ownership group that owns Big Woods, which features the Malik Reneau burger.)

By the way, if you’re older like me, and haven’t been to Upstairs since your college days, it’s a much different scene now.

They’ve done so much good work to expand it and make it an even more inviting and comfortable place to hang out. And we couldn’t be more appreciative of how much work they’ve done to help us make this happen — just great people who we are happy to support.

For those of you who don’t have tickets to the game, Galen and Scott will be watching it at Upstairs and providing some halftime and immediate postgame entertainment while we make our way over from Assembly Hall. So feel free to make it a watch party too.

We’ll all be arriving in Bloomington on Friday, February 2nd to have our annual Back Home Network team dinner. Then we’ll be out on the town that evening, hoping to see some of you who are also out that night. So if you’re going to be in town, please let us know.

A couple notes about the meetup:

• For those who attended the September event Galen hosting at Upstairs, the audio will be much better. We’ve figured out a better setup.

• We have no special guests lined up at the moment — and no, will not acquiesce to Ryan’s demand that he be listed as “Guest of Honor” — but we are working on some. (It’s tricky to get anyone from the men’s and women’s teams since it’s a gameday for the men and the women play on Sunday.) If we can lock anyone down, I’ll let you know. Honestly, and this will sound super corny but it’s true: the special guests are all of you. That’s why we do this, and that’s why we’re so excited for it every year.

• In addition to AC and CC, Tony Adragna will be there, as will Kathy from Doing The Work (Jeff is a maybe due to his high school hoops broadcasting schedule), and Mike and Bob from Xs and Joes.

• Upstairs is a 21+ establishment, so unfortunately you won’t be able to bring young children. (But if you are in town, and will have young kids with you, send me an email and I’ll get you my phone number so we can find a way to meet up somewhere that day, either at the game or elsewhere.)

• I mentioned the raffle above. We have secured some pretty incredible items to raffle off — thanks to one individual’s incredible generosity of time and effort — with the proceeds supporting our friends at Hoosier Ticket Project. Details of the raffle to come.

That should be about it. If there any additional details folks need to know, I’ll shoot out another email. Please reply or leave a comment if you have any questions.

This is the always the best weekend of the year, thanks to the many of you who come to hang out with us. The hoops are all well and good, but this is truly the good stuff. :-)

Crossover Podcast with Galen

As mentioned above, I recorded a crossover podcast yesterday with Galen exploring why things haven’t gone as planned this season and may need to happen moving forward to right the ship. It’s published on the CrimsonCast feed.

I assume everyone who subscribes to us also subscribes to the godfathers of IU sports podcasting, but just in case, here is the Spotify embed and link to the episode page:

As you’ll see, they also published new episodes covering the women’s basketball team and chatting with Zach Osterman about the state of the men’s hoops program.

A Trio of Podcasts

Thanks for your attention. We never take it for granted.

Now let’s hope the women keep rolling along (and that Syd’s injury isn’t too serious) and that the men can start playing incrementally better as the season hits the stretch run.