In his first season as a head coach in the Big Ten, IU basketball’s Darian DeVries watched the best teams in the league pound the offensive glass.
Four of the Big Ten teams who at least made the Sweet 16 in March Madness and finished in the top seven in the conference standings were among the top-55 nationally in offensive rebounding rate. That includes Elite Eight teams Michigan, Illinois and Purdue. Second place Michigan State was the other.
Meanwhile IU struggled to earn second chances. Indiana ranked 16th among Big Ten teams in conference games with just a 24.4% offensive rebounding rate, while ranking 10th in the conference in offensive rebounding rate allowed.
This year DeVries has what is probably the tallest starting power forward/center duo in program history. 6-foot-11 Aiden Sherrell and 7-foot-2 Samet Yigitoglu will be on the court together for significant portions of games this season, and one of them should be out there at all times.
Collectively Sherrell and Yigitoglu are nine inches taller than last year’s starters at the four and five, Tucker DeVries and Sam Alexis. And with that substantial increase in length, DeVries wants to make sure he’s got a team that impacts the offensive glass much like last year’s top Big Ten squads.
“We’ve talked to our team all summer long — we want to be an elite offensive rebounding team,” DeVries said. “We have enough bodies and size and athleticism that we should be a great defensive and offensive rebounding team. We’re going to get it there.”
If IU is one of the nation’s top offensive rebounding teams, it will be the first time in a while DeVries has had a team like that.
His last four teams, going back to West Virginia and Drake, were all 298th or worse in offensive rebounding rate.
Sometimes offensive rebounding is a choice. Are you going to crash or just get back on defense? Sometimes that choice is influenced by personnel.
IU has the size, and DeVries appears to be going all in on the offensive glass this season.
“I haven’t had a lot of teams where we prioritized offensive rebounding,” DeVries said. “So that’s something that we’re putting a lot of time and effort into with this group, because I think this group could be a really good offensive rebounding team. We have enough size and length to go do that.”
GAME TWO IN PERU
Coming off a resounding 115-36 win over host Peru, Indiana is back in action Thursday evening at the FISU America Games in Lima.
The Hoosiers tip at 6 p.m. ET against the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Once again, the game can be streamed on YouTube.
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