The Hoosiers sought to rebuild their backcourt through the portal just for that effort to go up in flames this season.
Mike Woodson was pretty clear about Indiana’s offseason moves when he addressed the media during the Hoosiers’ annual event at Huber’s Winery.
The program needed to improve its guard play if it wanted to rebound in 2024-25. The staff approached the transfer portal process like NBA teams do for free agency, something Woodson is obviously more than familiar with.
A set list of potential portal targets, ranked, was put together. In the end Indiana landed two options that looked good: Washington State’s Myles Rice and Stanford’s Kanaan Carlyle.
Rice was the centerpiece of a Cougars team that made the NCAA Tournament while Carlyle played a similar role for an ill-fated Stanford team that ultimately ended up getting the Cardinal’s head coach, Jerod Haase, fired at the end of the season.
The plan seemed pretty clear. Rice would be the team’s starting point guard as he’d been for Washington State. Carlyle, a guy who looks to score but can pass, would handle the ball as a secondary option next to Rice in the starting backcourt and hunt shots when the Hoosiers needed points.
At first, this was how it worked. Both began the season as starters. Rice dazzled with his burst and sheer creativity with the ball while Carlyle struggled. The latter was to be expected some with a changed role from his time at Stanford.
Now, months later in February, both are on the bench. Carlyle hardly gets any minutes at all even. They’ve been replaced with Trey Galloway and Anthony Leal, both of whom were on the roster last year and for the three before that even.
So… what happened?
Let’s start with Rice. He’s had his moments with Indiana, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t really call him anything but a disappointment at this point. As the point guard, he was key to making all the talent on the roster fit together.
His averages don’t look too bad. 10.8 points, 2.9 rebounds and 2.8 assists isn’t great and probably isn’t good either, but it’s not terrible.
Which is where watching the games comes in. If you watch this team and how the staff handles Rice, it just doesn’t feel like they trust him. At all. And he’s given them a few reasons not to.
Rice has made some truly baffling decisions in games, particularly in the closing minutes. He heaved up an ill-fated turnaround 3-point jumper against Maryland instead of using a screen from Malik Reneau, who let him know afterward.
He took a wild shot or threw a truly awful pass, it’s unknown which one, in the closing minutes against Purdue with a chance to take the lead as probably the last guy who should’ve been trying to score given he had zero points and probably wouldn’t have been on the floor at all if Leal hadn’t fouled out.
When Indiana ran a last-ditch offensive possession against Ohio State, a game the Hoosiers ultimately ended up winning, Rice wasn’t even on the floor. The starting point guard.
He just hasn’t been good enough outside of that either. He’s disappeared occasionally during games and is statistically worse in just about every category compared to last year with few exceptions including, rather ironically, his 3-point shooting percentages.
As for Carlyle? Well.
Carlyle went from being Stanford’s main option at guard with (notably inefficient) averages of 11.5 points, 2.7 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game to riding the bench at Indiana with averages of 4.5 points, 1.7 rebounds and 1.5 assists.
He’s dealt with some injury concerns and was absent against Purdue, but he played just four total minutes against UCLA even when Indiana needed all the ballhandling it could get against a tough, pressure-oriented Bruins defense.
In this case I’m not entirely sure the source of the issues. Carlyle wasn’t efficient at Stanford, yes, but he was decently reliable as a catch-and-shoot option and can absolutely run some offense.
This goes back to a lingering problem of the Woodson era: the lack of a prominent true shooting guard.
The closest thing Indiana has had to that is Tamar Bates, who now stars at Missouri after neither he nor the Hoosiers’ staff could quite figure it out in Bloomington. Indiana’s usual two guard has been Trey Galloway, who had to become a point guard last year.
Whenever Carlyle was and is on the court, it’s hard to decipher what his role is. He’ll get out there and take some ill-advised shots to try and get going but that’s never really come to fruition. Early on it felt like he was just a bit of a 3-D player only he wasn’t hitting shots and that’s a weird role for a guy who can handle the ball the way Carlyle can.
It’s just not clear what the plan was for him.
Either way, Indiana has found itself with its prized and highly sought-after backcourt additions from last offseason being bench options that the staff doesn’t seem to trust or know how to maximize.
Which, obviously, not ideal.