Exhibitions often present an opportunity to go deep into the bench and test various lineups.
Indiana won’t have that luxury when it hosts Marian Friday evening in Bloomington (7:30 p.m. ET, BTN Plus).
Junior wing Nick Dorn is nearing a return from a foot injury, but he won’t play against the Knights.
“Starting to work his way back into some action. Don’t anticipate him playing any tomorrow night,” IU coach Darian DeVries said Thursday of Dorn. “The (Oct. 26) Baylor game I would probably say doubtful as well. We’ll see where that leads.
“We’re certainly getting closer to getting him to full practice type stuff, but we still got a little bit of time to go there yet.”
Also not expected to play Friday or really anytime this month are junior guard Jason Drake and freshman guard Aleksa Ristic.
Both are nursing lower leg/foot injuries that are expected to linger into the regular season.
“Yeah, unfortunately both those guys (Drake and Ristic) are probably going to be out for a little while yet,” DeVries said. “Certainly not going to have them for the start of the season and probably a few weeks into it for sure, which does make it challenging.
“Those are two guys that we’re counting on to hopefully give us some minutes and some depth, and so we got to be a little creative until one or two of those guys get back and give us a little more flexibility with our lineups.”
DeVries wasn’t asked about sophomore forward Josh Harris, but he seems unlikely to play Friday evening as well. Harris has been wearing a boot the last two times the media has been allowed to view the team, and DeVries mentioned Thursday he has been out of practice lately.
With so many players out, it appears Indiana will only have nine scholarship players available on Friday.
The starting lineup will likely be Tucker DeVries, Lamar Wilkerson, Reed Bailey, Conor Enright and Tayton Conerway, with contributions off the bench coming from Trent Sisley, Jasai Miles and Sam Alexis. Freshman big man Andrej Acimovic should get plenty of run too. And the walk-ons are probably licking their chops at the thought of the minutes likely in at least this first exhibition on Friday.
But all of the absences will strip away some of the value of the exhibitions to IU and DeVries, and leave questions unanswered when the season tips on Nov 5.
“It’s going to be challenging early just with Nick making his way back, how quickly he can get back into that game conditioning, and then also for us to get a little feel for where to best utilize him and plug him in,” DeVries said.
“The other two guys, they’re going to be a while, so then how quickly can they just get thrown in there and find their roles and be able to fit. So those are things that we don’t know yet, because of injuries we’re going to be a little bit limited on our depth right now.
“I anticipate it being 7 to 8 guys here early and then as those guys start to come back and get more in the 8, 9 being maybe 10 on certain nights from a depth standpoint.”
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