Indiana men’s basketball: Oumar Ballo scouting report

The Hoosiers land the No. 1 player in the portal, here’s what he brings.

Indiana men’s basketball landed a commitment from former Arizona center Oumar Ballo on Tuesday, per Joe Tipton on Twitter.

As of Tuesday, Ballo was rated as the No. 1 player in the transfer portal by 247Sports. Indiana’s seen him before too, when the Hoosiers traveled to Las Vegas back in 2022 to take on his Wildcats.

Mike Woodson has shown a preference for rim protectors and lob finishers since arriving and finding Trayce Jackson-Davis back in 2021. He replaced Jackson-Davis with Kel’el Ware last offseason.

Now that Ware’s off to the NBA, Woodson needed a new option to defend the paint and run the five. He’s found that in Ballo.

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Scouting Report

Ballo is a 7-footer, per ESPN and 247Sports. So a bit larger than Jackson-Davis but without the ceiling of Ware.

Absolutely doesn’t mean he can’t make an impact in Bloomington, having averaged 12.9 points, 10.1 rebounds and 0.8 assists last season with Arizona. He’ll in all likelihood take Ware’s spot at the five while Reneau stays put at power forward.

Strengths

• Rebounding
• Rim protecting
• Paint scoring

Weaknesses

• Non-shooter

Ballo’s job is simple: get boards and buckets in the paint. The man doesn’t shoot it from deep and frankly doesn’t need to, he’s effective enough down low and focuses on what he’s good at.

The interesting thing about Ballo is that he’s more of a finished product than what Woodson had in Jackson-Davis or Ware. The former built his game as a handler and passer while becoming an even better scorer while the latter had some motor concerns and was able to turn it up.

Ballo has been there, done that. He’s been on tournament teams in Arizona and played with plenty of high-caliber talent like Bennedict Mathurin and Caleb Love. This’ll be less teaching and expanding and more refining.

One of Indiana’s many issues last season was a rebounding threat outside of Ware, who had elite length to just go get the ball. Ballo fills that void immediately and becomes the best rebounder on the Hoosiers’ roster.

His offensive rebounding rate is a sky-high 15.3%(!!!). That would’ve been the best on last year’s Indiana roster by a mile and is 0.7 shy of doubling last year’s leader, Ware with 8%.

As far as scoring goes, it’s simple. He gets the ball down low in the post and gets it to the rim. He’s a very physical player and is willing to score through contact, but his free-throw shooting numbers are low should that get him to the line.

He has enough size and length to go up for the ball over his defender, catch them out of position and get an easy two points. Indiana’s gonna have to be really good about feeding the post and getting him catchable passes.

He combines the rebounding and paint scoring to get putbacks. He’s capable of grabbing all-advised shots and helping the offense finish a possession with points. That’ll help early on as guys get used to playing with eachother.

On defense, he’s not quite the blocker Ware was but is a bit more refined. Should draw less goaltends than the less experienced Ware with a block rate of 5%.

Overall, it looks like Woodson has found his next starting center. Ballo isn’t afraid of doing the work down low and should be among the best bigs in the Big Ten this upcoming season.