BLOOMINGTON — Three games into Darian DeVries’ first season as Indiana head men’s basketball coach, his team has already formed an offensive identity.
The Hoosiers are going to take a lot of 3-pointers, and they’re going to make a lot of them. They share the ball extremely well, and that translates into assists. And they take care of the ball.
That all results in very few wasted possessions, the sign of a ruthlessly efficient offense. And that’s what Indiana’s offense has looked like early this season. The team continued those trends Wednesday, in a 101-70 win over Milwaukee at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
“They just share the ball. I think that’s what good offense comes from — guys that are willing to move it, share it. We got great balance. One night it could be this guy, one night the next guy. They really don’t care. They don’t talk about it. They just go out and play and they take with the defense gives them,” DeVries said after the game. “I think that’s why you get the shooting percentages you get, because we’re getting the right type of shots.”
The Hoosiers (3-0) scored 1.485 points per possession on Wednesday. That’s the highest mark they’ve recorded so far this season, but not by much: IU finished at 1.463 PPP against Alabama A&M, and 1.370 against Marquette.
That level of efficiency was rarely seen in Bloomington in recent years. This IU roster is completely new, but it’s a group that knows exactly what it wants to do offensively. These players know what shots they want, and they know what they need to do to get them.
Point guard Tayton Conerway said ball movement has been key to the hot offensive start. Indiana finished with 23 assists on 34 made field goals Wednesday, with only seven turnovers. Those numbers looked similar in IU’s first two games: 23 assists on 36 made field goals with 11 turnovers against Alabama A&M, and 27 assists on 33 made field goals with eight turnovers against Marquette.
“I would say the reason why is probably just how unselfish we are moving the ball. Like giving up a good shot for a great shot,” Conerway said. “Sometimes even though that layup is open, there are seven footers now, so if we kick it up, wide open 3-point. Lamar (Wilkerson), Tucker (DeVries), they ain’t going to miss too many of them.”
Conerway, through three contests, is averaging 6.3 assists per game. It’s still early in the season — three games in non-conference play is a small sample size, even with a power-conference opponent in that stretch.
But only one Hoosier in the last decade — Xavier Johnson in 2021-22 — has finished above five assists per game. None of Johnson’s teammates that year averaged more than two assists per game. But this season, so far, Wilkerson and Conor Enright have both dished four assists per game, and Tucker DeVries and Reed Bailey are averaging 2.7 per game.
“I think it’s contagious. When everybody else wants to share the ball and we’re all moving it, it makes you want to buy in and really do that,” Bailey said. “We’ve preached it throughout the summer and I think we’ve showed it in these first games here, and I think we can just keep getting better, keep making sure we find the open man for the assist. When we get open threes, it’s a pretty good chance that thing is going in.”
Indiana’s 3-point shooting is the biggest difference between this year’s team (already) and the groups Archie Miller and Mike Woodson fielded the last several years. IU shot 10 for 24 from 3-point range against Alabama A&M, 14 for 28 against Marquette, and 14 for 28 again against Milwaukee. The Hoosiers never attempted 24 or more 3-pointers in a game more than five times in any season under Woodson; Miller’s first team did it six times, and the next three squads didn’t top that mark.
And IU rarely made that many threes in a game, as well. This year’s Hoosiers have already matched the most number of games with double-digit 3-pointers made in a season that any of Miller’s teams recorded, and Woodson’s teams never did it more than five times in one year. Indiana hasn’t posted 3-point numbers like this year’s team is putting up early on since Tom Crean was head coach.
Tucker and Wilkerson have thrived from beyond the arc to start this season, but IU surrounds that duo with a lot of other shooting threats. Among scholarship players who saw the court on Wednesday, Sam Alexis was the only one who didn’t make a 3-pointer.
DeVries assembled a roster full of shooters, and it’s paid dividends so far. But the 3-point success traces back to ball movement, as well.
“(Bailey is) 6-10 and coming down, pushing the break, getting assists. It’s just crazy. Then we got Tucker who can post up, he can shoot, he can come off ball screens. Lamar doing the same thing,” Conerway said. “A lot of people label them as just shooters, but the way they can come off ball screen, put him in jail, kind of figure out where that open pass is is something that they’re underrated in and something they’re really good at.”
Indiana is only one week into the regular season. This team has a lot of games coming over the next four months, with plenty of tougher competition on tap down the road.
But the Hoosiers are already showing clear offensive trends and identity that look very encouraging. They’ve averaged a ridiculous 99.7 points per game, after all.
They’ll have games, at some point, where things are tougher. Shots may not always fall the way they have so far, key players could get in foul trouble, injuries could pop up, an opponent could devise a good plan to slow down IU’s ball movement, or any number of other things that could pose an obstacle. Some of the numbers Indiana has put up in the first three games might not be sustainable for an entire season.
But the way the Hoosiers are attaining those numbers — the style of basketball, the offensive philosophy that’s led to this early-season outburst — could be the basis of an extremely potent offense.
“Hopefully what they (fans) see is not just the points. Hopefully they see just guys that play the right way, they play hard, they play unselfish, they share the ball, they understand cutting, moving, screening for one another,” DeVries said. “That’s what ultimately we want people to really take joy in, is like they just like watching this team play together.”
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