Indiana's Cody Zeller Heading to NBA Indiana's Cody Zeller turned down one chance to play in the NBA. He couldn't say no twice. The 7-foot sophomore center who returned to school last fall for one more shot at a national championship announced Wednesday he is leaving college early to enter the NBA draft. The reason was simple. "The leaders that I came in looking up to and copying their work ethic were Vic, Christian (Watford), Jordan (Hulls), Derek (Elston), a lot of those older guys that are leaving now," Zeller said explaining the difference between last year's decision and this year's. IU will have a great year next year, but the guys I was closest to are graduating. The decision was first announced on the website of his family's business shortly before the news conference at Assembly Hall. Zeller said he was eager to start working with the Christian basketball camps being run by his parents and two older brothers, something the youngest Zeller said NCAA rules barred him from participating even though the organization is considered a nonprofit. Zeller's announcement came 24 hours after 6-foot-5 junior Victor Oladipo announced he was turning pro, too, in the exact same spot -- at midcourt inside Assembly Hall with the school's five national championship banners clearly visible in the background. These Hoosiers wanted to add a sixth banner but that quest fell short when East Regional champion Syracuse beat the Hoosiers in the regional semifinals. Yet when Zeller walked off the court in Washington that night, he was already pretty sure he had played his last college game. "After a while, you just kind of know," he said when asked about the timing of his decision. Barring injury, I kind of knew it might be my last year, so I enjoyed every minute of it. There was a sense of accomplishment playing my last game at Assembly Hall, playing in my last (NCAA) tournament. The early departures mean Indiana will have a very different look from the teams that won 56 games and reached the NCAA tournament's regional semifinals each of the last two seasons. Coach Tom Crean must replace four 1,000-point scorers -- Hulls and Watford, both seniors, Oladipo and now Zeller. They were Indiana's top four scorers last season and accounted for nearly two-thirds of the Hoosiers' points. The cornerstone, though, was Zeller, the highly-touted high school player who turned down North Carolina and Butler to lay the groundwork in Crean's grand rebuilding project. Zeller lived up to the billing in almost every possible way. In the three years before Zeller's arrival, Crean's teams won just 28 games and didn't make a postseason appearance. With Zeller, the Hoosiers re-emerged as a Top 25 program, a Big Ten title contender and a player on the national stage. He finished with 1,157 career points and leaves as the Hoosiers' career leader in field goal percentage (59.7 percent). But the impact he made went far deeper than any numbers. "What Cody means to Indiana, it's much like Victor, it's hard to describe it and it's hard to put it into words, but what Cody has done has helped raise the level of every person in this program -- every coach, every player, every manager and that's not an easy feat," Crean said. He's really come in here and left his mark on this program and it's one that will stand for a very, very long time.