Trey Galloway calls consensus first team All-American Trayce Jackson-Davis one of his best friends.
But when asked which former teammate he’d most like to run it back with for one more season, Galloway went a different direction.
“I would say Kel’el (Ware),” Galloway told Miller Kopp on the Player’s Perspective podcast.
Although both Galloway and Kopp playfully acknowledged Jackson-Davis would be disappointed in that choice, the fifth-year IU guard had sound logic.
Pressed into duty as the team’s primary ball handler for much of the 2023-24 campaign, Galloway developed into a high-level facilitator.
The 6-foot-5 Culver, Ind. product became the first Hoosier since Isiah Thomas (1980-81) to have multiple 12-plus assist games in a single season, and he closed Big Ten play with 105 total assists, tied for the second most in program history.
Galloway knows who was buttering his bread.
Able to find rare air above the rim, Ware was on the receiving end of a lot of Galloway’s 143 total assists for the season, more than his total for his first three years at IU combined.
“Once we really started clicking, once he (Ware) kind of brought that out at the end of the year and started to really play the way everyone knew he could play, it made the game so easy for me with the pick-and-roll,” Galloway said. “All I had to do is throw it up to him, throw it to the rafters and he’s going to get it.”
But what about Trayce?
Galloway shot 46.2% from three as a junior, and in that year it was Jackson-Davis who was delivering a lot of the assists to thwart double-teams in the post.
But before a knee injury ended his season, Galloway seemed to find his groove running the show last season.
“The ball was in my hands a lot more this year,” he said. “I didn’t run as much pick-and-roll with Trayce.”
Unfortunately for Galloway, he’ll have to find a new favorite to work with in 2024-25.
Ware had a very successful summer with the Heat after the franchise chose him in the first round of the NBA Draft. He was named NBA 2K25 All-Summer League first team and helped lead Miami to the Summer League title.
In six games in the Las Vegas summer league, Ware averaged 18 points, 8.3 rebounds and 1.5 blocks. He shot 61.8% from the field.
He also played in two games in the California Classic before that, where he posted 19 points and 8.5 rebounds per contest.
