If there was one thing that clearly broke Indiana’s 2023-24 season, it was faulty roster construction.
For whatever the reasons, Mike Woodson and his staff failed to land big-time guard talent in the transfer portal last spring, and that mishap, along with the injuries suffered by Xavier Johnson, haunted them throughout the year on both ends of the floor.
It seems clear lessons were learned.
The Hoosiers wasted no time, even skipping the NIT, to jump in the transfer portal with two feet.
With significant financial tailwinds in the name, image and likeness era, Indiana has attacked the offseason with vigor, and they’ve produced impressive results to this point.
How impressive?
Through Saturday, Indiana had the No. 1 ranked 2024 transfer portal haul according to 247Sports after landing Kanaan Carlyle (Stanford), Oumar Ballo (Arizona) and Myles Rice (Washington State). You had no idea just how impactful the Big Ten’s poaching of four Pac-12 teams — leading to its demise — would be, did you?
According to data at Bart Torvik, Indiana’s current 10 scholarship player roster produces an overall expected rating that would rank in the top-15 based on the final 2024 standings.
Carlyle and Rice give Indiana a pair of dynamic playmaking guards. Rice was first team All-Pac-12 as a freshman. Carlyle had three games of 22 or more points against high major opponents, again, as a freshman. You could argue Indiana hasn’t had even one guard at their level on the roster since Yogi Ferrell, save for Jalen Hood-Schifino. And now they have two.
It’s interesting to compare Carlyle and Rice’s freshmen seasons to North Carolina’s R.J. Davis and Caleb Love in 2020-21. No one is arguing Carlyle and Rice will have the careers Davis and Love have had, but it isn’t unreasonable to argue the two new IU guards were better than Davis and Love as freshmen.
There are concerns about the three-point shooting ability of Carlyle and Rice, but consider this.
Davis shot 32% from three as a freshman for UNC, while Love shot 26%. Those conversion rates are almost exactly the same as Carlyle and Rice as freshmen, respectively. Davis and Love both improved to 36% as sophomores — nothing crazy — and that improvement was good enough to carry UNC to the national title game. It isn’t a stretch to say if Carlyle and Rice both shoot around 36% from three as sophomores, Indiana will be a major problem for opponents. And directionally, that kind of shooting improvement doesn’t seem unreasonable.
CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein said on Saturday “Indiana is a consensus Top 25 team entering 2024-25” after the addition of Carlyle. But will IU have enough talent to make a Final Four run like North Carolina in 2022? After all, Woodson has said many times his goal is to win championships, and the fan base shares those aspirations.
As impressive as things have gone thus far for Woodson and crew, when it comes to completing the roster, what we’ve seen to this point was kind of the “easy” part. And the Hoosiers still seem like they are a step or two away from really rounding out the roster and putting themselves in the conversation for one of next season’s best teams.
No, there’s nothing truly easy about securing talent like Carlyle, Ballo and Rice. But the point is, all three could commit to IU with some degree of comfort they’ll have a major role next season.
Those three, plus returners Trey Galloway, Malik Reneau and Mackenzie Mgbako, along with freshman Bryson Tucker, project to secure the lion’s share of the minutes as things stand.
Virtually everyone in the transfer portal wants playing time. They might have other reasons for making a move, but they all want to see meaningful action. And it isn’t easy for IU to promise that with a straight face right now, a fact that no doubt played a role in their portal recruiting misses of Connor Hickman, Ryan Conwell and most likely Connor Essegian.
What did those three all have in common? They are very good shooters. And Indiana will no doubt continue to look for proven shooters to play a role on the wing and in the frontcourt to round out the roster.
Players like Evansville’s Ben Humrichous, Grace College’s Elijah Malone and Florida Gulf Coast’s Zach Anderson have all received interest from IU, and there are plenty of others just off the public radar who could step in and really catapult this roster to an elite level.
Woodson and crew have gotten this far, so there’s no reason to doubt them now.
But it won’t be easy.
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