Yogi Ferrell was standing in the upper viewing area at Park Tudor High School in Indianapolis doing a few previously arranged media interviews pregame.
The point guard had on a sharp suit as he talked to a writer and then television stations.
He was a little more than an hour from stepping on the court and announcing he would play for Tom Crean and Indiana, the point guard of the future for the Hoosiers.
“I want to hang a banner,” Ferrell said on Nov. 24, 2010. “At Indiana, it’s all about banners.”
As Yogi Ferrell heads down the final stretch of his Indiana basketball career, he has two Big Ten championship banners with a final NCAA Tournament to go.
Ferrell this season spearheaded a team that stumbled out of the gate but found its stride, led the Big Ten early and won the outright conference championship on the road with a game to play.
This afternoon on Indiana’s traditional Senior Night following the Hoosiers’s 4:30 p.m. game against Maryland, Ferrell and the other IU seniors will be honored.
He will leave Indiana with a host of impressive statistics that put him in the same company as some of the previous IU basketball all time greats.
WATCH: Tom Crean, Indiana players discuss Yogi Ferrell's college career
“I just want to be remembered as a winner,” Ferrell said after practice on Saturday, “a guy that went out there and played hard every possession with how active I am on the court, giving it my all, that’s the main thing.
“Being a part of two Big Ten championships, hopefully that helps my case.”
Ferrell is the first Indiana player to win two outright Big Ten titles since Matt Nover in 1989 and 1993, Crean said.
Ferrell already is Indiana’s career leader in assists, starts, 3-pointers made in Big Ten play and is one of the school’s top-10 scorers.
Five players in Indiana basketball history rank in the top 10 all-time in scoring and have more than one Big Ten title: Calbert Cheaney, Don Schlundt, Damon Bailey, Kent Benson and Yogi Ferrell.
“It’s not just the great plays he makes for his teammates, the plays out on the court, the points, rebounds and assists. It’s more than that to us,” fellow senior Nick Zeisloft said.
“We wouldn’t trade him for anything, and we think he’s the most valuable guy in the Big Ten for sure because of what he does just as a leader, as a person, not just as a basketball player.”
If there are two games to bookend Ferrell’s offensive growth — albeit at vasty different levels — they came on March 20, 2010, and March 1, 2016.
SEE ALSO: Yogi Ferrell hits a shot that earns a place in IU basketball lore
In 2010, Ferrell had several shots to win a semistate game for Park Tudor but they just wouldn’t fall in a game the Panthers eventually won 47-45 in four overtimes.
In 2016, with Indiana needing a basket to win the Big Ten outright title at Iowa, Ferrell hit a 3-pointer from the left wing with 37 seconds to play.
“Evolving is a big part of who you are as a player,” legendary IU radio voice Don Fischer said. “In the four seasons he’s been at Indiana, he’s played on four different types of teams and he’s had to have a different role on all four of those ball clubs.
“He was just a passer as a freshman. His second year, he’s supposed to be the man because everybody left, so now he has to take over the scorer role on this basketball team because they have no outside shooters.
“As a junior, he was a combination of those things.
“This year, he’s got all those other guys around him and he’s back to being a facilitator in some respects but now he’s got that killer instinct.
“That’s what I think he’s developed over his last few years and his leadership skills to handle the other guys on this basketball team. I just think he’s grown so much.”
In high school and college (to date) combined, Ferrell is 163-60. He went 73-19 at Park Tudor and is 90-41 so far at IU.
He has won two Big Ten championships, two state championships, played for another state championship and led his Indiana Elite AAU team to a number of titles.
Ferrell is a McDonald’s All-American who has played four years of college basketball, something rarely seen anymore in the one-and-done era.
“Fans need to make sure not to punish him for that,” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo told peegs.com. “Is he in the Isiah Thomas mold?
“Like I said about Denzel (Valentine) — If he’s a poor, poor, poor, poor man’s Magic Johnson, is Ferrell a poor, poor man’s Isiah Thomas.
WATCH: IU players discuss winning another Big Ten outright title
“He’s got the ability to play something like that. His legacy should be looked at on how he finishes now. It’s been a little bit of a roller coaster, but it’s not always been his fault. Guys got kicked off the team.
“If he wants to have a legacy, he puts it all together. He’s proven to be one of the best guards in the country, but you’ve got to bring your team with you if you’re going to be one of the best guards.
“If you’re a center, you can do that a little on your own. To be one of the best guards, you’re going to be measured by how your team does. That would be the thing that would take him from great to elite.”
Ferrell entered IU as part of a five man class. He is the only member of that class to play all four years, the others being dismissed or transferring.
Ferrell had a couple bumps along the way, but grew through them.
He never missed a single start in four years.
“It’s been an amazing career,” Fischer said. “He’s such a tough kid. His toughness maybe supersedes anything about him.”
Ferrell’s offensive ability has often drawn the most attention, but his defensive impact has been overlooked.
Taking just a sample of games Indiana has won the past few years, the 6-foot Ferrell has defended Michigan’s 6-foot-6 Nik Stauskas, Iowa’s 6-foot-6 Peter Jok and Nebraska’s 6-foot-7 Andrew White.
“I’d put him up with any guard in the country defensively,” Crean said during the season.
Yogi Ferrell’s name has been known for the better part of 12 years.
Early on, his parents didn’t know what to make of the hype.
They were in their van with a reporter, driving from a basketball tournament to their house and the conversation was about their son — their then-in-fifth-grade son — being ranked the No. 1 player in the nation in his class and what exactly to make of that.
A camp was pushing for Ferrell’s attendance.
“What they wanted me to do was send $575," Kevin Ferrell said Sr. said. "I said, 'I'm going to have to pass.’”
The Ferrells passed on plenty of hype and went to work, which is what Yogi Ferrell has been doing long before and throughout his exceptional Indiana basketball career.
His dad took him off the AAU circuit for a stretch, worked on fundamentals, then unleashed him on Indiana high school basketball and, eventually, the greater basketball landscape.
Ferrell’s first visited Indiana as a high school freshmen, riding around campus on a golf cart with Crean.
Today isn’t about legacy — that’s unwritten for any player with an NCAA Tournament still to play — but about his journey and his place
This is a moment for IU fans to say thank you to one of the best guards ever to wear the Indiana uniform and watch him in Assembly Hall one last time. He never again will play in Assembly Hall, in front of 17,000-plus, in front of the largest student section in college basketball.
He never again will walk out of that tunnel, onto that floor.
On that day at Park Tudor in Nov. of 2010, after Ferrell went to the locker room, Crean and his wife later occupied the viewing box to watch the game.
Ferrell stepped on the floor pregame, took a microphone and announced he would be playing at Indiana, drawing a lengthy ovation.
“He means a lot to me personally because I’ve known him for a very long time and it’s been a lot of time watching him grown up,” Crean said. “I’ve known him from when he was a high school freshman, especially as a sophomore, to now a college senior.
“To me, it’s the day by day that you go through of watching somebody like that grow. He’s always been a winner. He came in a winner. He came in a champion. Now with this Big Ten championship, he’s got another championship at the end of his senior year.
“That speaks volumes of about what kind of player, what kind of competitor he is.
“But watching him grow up as a person, watching him grow up as a leader, watching him take his confidence to another level because he brought confidence to his teammates, I think that’s the biggest thing.”
