Did IU basketball emphasize getting bigger at the expense of the three-point shooting?
Second-year Indiana coach Darian DeVries doesn’t think so.
In fact, he believes some of that added size in the frontcourt will be part of the solution when the Hoosiers take the court in 2026-27.
Shooting threes was a major part of IU’s identity last season. More than half of their attempts from the field (50.5%) came from beyond the arc — the highest percentage ever by a Hoosiers squad — by a wide margin. That three-point volume was the 14th-highest in the nation. And their 34.7% make rate from long range was the second-highest by an Indiana team since Tom Crean was head coach.
But gone are high-volume shooters Lamar Wilkerson and Tucker DeVries, who took their combined 521 attempts to the NBA Summer League with Oklahoma City and Boston, respectively. In fact, gone are all but 48 of IU’s three-point attempts from last season, with those hoists belonging to sophomore forward Trent Sisley.
DeVries has said on repeat he emphasized adding Big Ten size to his second IU roster, and he’s got it in 7-foot-2 Samet Yigitoglu and 6-foot-11 Aiden Sherrell.
But who on this revamped IU basketball roster will take all those threes?
With Yigitoglu and Sherrell on board, along with good slashers like Markus Burton and Jaeden Mustaf, it won’t come as a surprise if Indiana shoots less than the 28.3 threes per game last year’s team averaged.
Even if that’s the case, DeVries likes his arsenal of snipers from deep — and even sees a potential Wilkerson replacement.
“I like this group’s shooting,” DeVries told Andy Katz. ” I think we have great depth there as well. I think Darren Harris has looked really good in our workouts so far this summer. He’s done a lot of things similar to Lamar in our workouts. So that’s exciting because we all know how Lamar could fill it up.”
Harris told The Daily Hoosier last month he noticed the confidence the staff had in Wilkerson, who averaged 20.9 points per game last season and became just the second IU player to make 100 threes in a season.
Obviously Harris making threes at a rate anywhere in the neighborhood of Wilkerson would be a major coup for DeVries. Harris has only made 28 college triples to this point in his two-year career. But the skill level is there, and the early signs are encouraging.
DeVries also cited Burton and Bryce Lindsay as two players who can fill it up from deep. They’re at 33.2% and 37.7% respectively for their three-year college careers. He also said his trio of freshmen — Prince-Alexander Moody, Vaughn Karvala and Trevor Manhertz — have been making threes this summer.
But perhaps the two most notable players DeVries named were Mustaf and Sherrell, who he told Katz were shooting “very well” and “incredibly well,” respectively.
The 6-foot-6 Mustaf has posted a very respectable 37.2% from three through his first two college seasons. But he’s done that on low volume. The Georgia Tech transfer has taken just 86 threes in two years.
And Sherrell arrived in Bloomington as someone the staff hoped could become a pick-and-pop option as a stretch-four. He’s a career 33.6% three-point shooter on 122 attempts in two seasons at Alabama.
There’s a lot of projection baked in, but if Harris, Mustaf and Sherrell can have strong seasons from three, while Burton and Lindsay pick up where the left off, and perhaps a freshman or two contributes, it would have the potential to seriously raise the ceiling of this team.
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