The Hoosiers ended their exhibition slate on Friday.
Indiana men’s basketball closed out its two-game exhibition slate on Friday with a 106-64 win over Marian.
This one meant a little more. Marian athletic director Steve Downing is an Indiana legend and hired Pat Knight, son of legendary Hoosiers coach Bob Knight, to coach the Knights this offseason.
The younger Knight has previous head coaching stints at Texas Tech and Lamar, but hasn’t been on a sideline since 2014. Downing hired Knight from a scouting role with the Indiana Pacers.
Both Downing and Knight were honored in the pregame introductions, receiving standing ovations from the Assembly Hall crowd. Following his introduction, Knight jogged to the center court trident logo and kissed it.
As far as basketball goes, it was what you generally expect from an exhibition. Indiana’s win over Tennessee probably involved a bit more run from the starters, so Mike Woodson and company were allowed a degree of flexibility they didn’t deploy against the Volunteers.
You can only take so much away from these, the scoring margin not being one of them. Here’s x takeaways.
Myles Rice – The playmaker this roster demands
On paper, this is probably the best roster the program has had in years. Key, talented pieces from last year’s ill-fated group combined with portal additions and a five-star freshman wing in Bryson Tucker.
But somebody needs to get the ball around to all that talent. The team’s gonna have a lot of passing, but Myles Rice is going to be the tip of the spear.
He built on the excellence he showed in the first exhibition against Tennessee, flying down the court, finding teammates or calling his own number and getting to the cup with ease. That’ll be a bit more difficult when the games start counting, but Rice has been there and done that.
He unlocks something that last year’s roster didn’t have and solves the program’s biggest offseason problem. He’s gonna be the most important piece of the puzzle, as Mike Woodson would describe it.
Bryson Tucker’s Indiana debut
Indiana’s lone freshman was unable to play against Tennessee, but suited up for tonight’s exhibition and just about stole the show.
Again, it was an exhibition against NAIA talent, but Tucker got to his spots on the floor with relative ease, hitting multiple jumpers in the midrange area between minutes at shooting guard and small forward.
He was in near-constant movement on the offensive end of the court, cutting off the ball and flushing lobs at the rim.
It’ll need to happen during live basketball that counts, but Tucker absolutely has the potential to be the bench scoring option the program has lacked for a few years now.
Jakai Newton’s first college minutes
Jakai Newton saw his first (unofficial) minutes as a college basketball player after redshirting last season while recovering from injury.
He was out there for defense and looked good on that end. Offensively, he got a tough, crafty layup to go in traffic for his first and only points of the night, not seeing any of his three attempts from deep fall.
I wouldn’t expect him to get too many minutes this season, especially early on, but it’s much better than him being unable to suit up at all.
Shooting woes
Indiana shot a less-than-ideal 24% from long range but did so on 25 attempts, a decently healthy number. Nine of those came from Luke Goode, who had an uncharacteristically poor night from deep before seeing two fall late.
With him you just need water to find its level. You know he can shoot the basketball, that’s why he’s here to begin with.
Indiana’s other attempts from deep were pretty evenly spread around the roster. Nobody not named Mgbako took more than five attempts from long range. Five players, two being walk-ons, took a single shot from the perimeter.
Kanaan Carlyle wasn’t available tonight and Rice took none, focusing more on distributing the ball than scoring it.
Mike Woodson said Indiana has been shooting the ball well in volume during practice. It remains to be seen if that’ll carry over into games.
Oumar Ballo – passer?
Oumar Ballo wasn’t necessarily known as a passing big when he was at Arizona.
Through two exhibition matchups with Indiana, he’s been asked to read the court and find the open man. Woodson is no stranger to pushing his big men out of their comfort zone a tad, relying on Trayce Jackson-Davis as a passer and getting Kel’el Ware to play through defensive contact.
With Ballo, it looks like he’s asking him to open the floor up a bit as a passer. As a non-shooter, it’d definitely help Indiana’s fortunes to have a frontcourt passing duo rather than just Malik Reneau as a point forward.