Indiana men’s basketball’s regular season is less than a week away.
IU gets rolling with non-conference play in early November, hosting Alabama A&M on Wednesday. Darian DeVries has a lot of preseason work to build on with the Hoosiers in his first year with the program. They played three exhibition games in Puerto Rico in August, as part of their team trip, and then two more in October. Three of those contests were against comparable opposition: two of the Puerto Rico games against Serbian team Mega Superbet, and a matchup with Baylor in Indianapolis last weekend.
This new-look IU team has shown potential going into the season. But, as always, some concerns and questions remain.
Here are two of those big questions about the Hoosiers as the regular season looms.
Will this team be able to rebound enough?
When Indiana assembled its roster for the coming season, the group’s lack of size stood out quickly.
The Hoosiers’ tallest players are 6-foot-10 Reed Bailey and Andrej Acimovic, and the latter appears unlikely to see significant minutes this year. It’s the first IU team without a 7-footer since 2022-23 — but that group still had 6-foot-9 Trayce Jackson-Davis, the program’s all-time leading rebounder. Bailey, who averaged 4.9 rebounds per game at Davidson, won’t match Jackson-Davis’ proficiency on the glass.
Indiana’s rebounding weakness stood out during its exhibition game against Baylor. The Bears outrebounded the Hoosiers, 44-25. Even as Darian DeVries’ team made its comeback and took control of the game for much of the second half, the rebounding fortunes didn’t change: Baylor held a 19-11 edge in the first half, and 25-14 in the second half.
“The area you saw today that we got to improve the most is the defensive rebounding,” DeVries said after the Baylor game. “We are undersized, so we have to really be technical in hitting people. We can’t allow people to just run in there and jump. We’re not winning a lot of those jumping contests. So that physicality is going to be important.”
The Bears grabbed 16 offensive rebounds in the game — an offensive rebound percentage at 38 percent, off 36 missed field goals and six missed foul shots — and turned those into 18 second-chance points. The Hoosiers, meanwhile, secured only four offensive rebounds.
The exhibition game setting impacted game play, which factored into rebound numbers. Fouls didn’t matter, as the teams evidently agreed that nobody would foul out even upon reaching five fouls. So both sides could continue playing aggressively even if they would’ve been in foul trouble during a real game.
But rebounding was a concern even before Sunday. It’s one of the biggest question marks for this team going into the regular season.
What will IU’s depth and rotation look like when injuries clear up?
DeVries used eight players against Baylor, after playing nine scholarship players in the first exhibition against Marian. Acimovic didn’t see the floor against the Bears.
The usage patterns and trends offer insights as to where the Hoosiers stand as far as lineups and rotations entering the regular season. Tucker DeVries, Lamar Wilkerson, and Tayton Conerway all look primed for heavy workloads this year, and potentially Conor Enright as well. Bailey and Sam Alexis will share frontcourt minutes pretty evenly. And freshman Trent Sisley should play a real role off the bench.
But Indiana has four scholarship players working their way back from injuries: Nick Dorn, Josh Harris, Jason Drake, and Aleksa Ristic. Dorn, per reports on Thursday, will likely be cleared this week with a possibility of playing in the season-opener on Wednesday.
IU basketball’s Nick Dorn should be fully cleared this week, questionable for opener
But those injuries have certainly impacted DeVries’ options for preseason. And ahead of the Marian exhibition, he indicated that the rotation may expand once he has some of those players available.
“How quickly can they (the injured players) just get thrown in there and find their roles and be able to fit? Those are things that we don’t know yet because of injuries,” DeVries said in mid-October. “I anticipated (playing) seven to eight guys here early, and then as those guys start to come back, get more in that eight, nine, and maybe even 10 on certain nights, from a depth standpoint.”
Dorn, who averaged 15.2 points and 3.8 rebounds per game for Elon last season, is expected to play a tangible role for the Hoosiers this season. But what will that role look like? Could he challenge Enright for a spot in the starting lineup? Would he take minutes off the current starters’ workloads?
Harris and Drake seem less likely to be major contributors this season, and DeVries indicated that pair could be looking at a longer timeline stretching into the regular season. But could those role projections change? With an entirely new team and coaching staff, it’s never impossible.
And what of Ristic, who’s played at the professional level in Serbia but didn’t get a normal preseason?
Aleksa Ristic is set to bring professional mindset and experience to IU men’s basketball
The guard played for Indiana in Puerto Rico in August, but he hadn’t been with the program — or in the United States — for very long at that point. Ristic showed some flashes in his 17.3 minutes per game across those three exhibitions, but he then missed most of Indiana’s preseason in October with an injury. He was in a walking boot as official practice began in late September, but he was no longer wearing it at Gainbridge Fieldhouse for the Baylor game, even though he still didn’t play.
When he becomes available, Ristic could be an intriguing option for the Hoosiers. But how quickly will he adapt to the game in the U.S.? And how big a role would DeVries trust him with, and where would those minutes come from?
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