Class of 2025 in-state guard Braylon Mullins announced at his high school on Tuesday he has committed to Connecticut.
He’s the second big in-state miss in the high school senior class for Indiana, following Jalen Haralson’s commitment to Notre Dame a few weeks ago.
IU does have a commitment from in-state 2025 forward Trent Sisley, and they’re still after a few more 2025 prospects. But irrespective of how those recruitments go, they’ll have heavy losses and big holes to fill due to eligibility after the 2024-25 season.
At least Oumar Ballo, Dallas James, Langdon Hatton, Trey Galloway, Anthony Leal and Luke Goode will be leaving in the spring, creating five roster openings after Sisley fills one. And that’s before taking into account any early departures for the NBA, or transfers out of the program. It also ignores that teams will be able to have 15 scholarship players next year.
So there will be a lot of openings whenever the 2024-25 campaign wraps up.
It’s not a scenario altogether different than where Mike Woodson and his staff found themselves last spring, when Liam McNeeley decommitted from the program, three players transferred out, one went to the NBA, and two more left due to eligibility.
If we learned anything from that experience, this is no time to panic.
Things seemed dire in March. But Woodson and crew went from a 19-14 team, with a depleted roster — to the preseason top-20. And that all happened seemingly in the blink of an eye.
They added a late spring high school commitment in Bryson Tucker. That’s something Woodson has done with regularity, after landing Tamar Bates, Malik Reneau, and Mackenzie Mgbako the three preceding springs. The fourth-year head coach hasn’t had a great deal of success in long-term high school recruitments, but he’s landed an elite available high school prospect in spring speed-dating each and every year.
Woodson also added young guards with proven ability at the college level via the transfer portal in Myles Rice and Kanaan Carlyle. Each has three years of college eligibility remaining, and both arrived at IU having already demonstrated their prep skills will translate to the next level. They are ready to step in and be major contributors this season.
Rice and Carlyle represent a new way of looking at college basketball recruiting. Is it preferrable to land unproven high school talent with four years remaining, or proven talent with three years? While that might sound like a rationalization to some extent after missing on Mullins and Haralson — and it is — it is also a difficult concept to argue against in the transfer portal era.
Woodson was also able to land a first team All-Pac-12 big man in Oumar Ballo, and a proven veteran shooter in Luke Goode.
If the goal is to assemble talent and build a roster that is capable of winning in March, and it is, the IU staff did that in the spring. It may just be time to ask yourself how much you care about where that talent comes from. Chances are, fans won’t be thinking much about that if 2024-25 ends up being a very successful season. Despite all of the chaos and upheaval in the spring, Woodson has his best roster in four seasons, and his best opportunity to give the fans exactly what they want.
It might seem risky to build a roster in the spring via the portal. But since when has high school recruiting been simple or free from risk? Gone are the days when transfers were rare. The last few springs have proven to be 2,000 transfer bonanzas with every conceivable roster need available in abundance. Not every spring portal haul will be as successful for Indiana as 2024, but the staff clearly learned lessons, and proved they could execute at a high level.
Yes, Mullins and Haralson are players the staff wanted and tried hard to land. Yes, each of those misses sting. And yes, there is something still nice about having Indiana kids on the roster, to some extent. Speaking of that, did you know four of the 13 scholarship players on this year’s team are from Indiana? And only two were recruited to IU out of high school. Again, there are many ways to build a team in this new era. It may have been true five years ago, but today all is not lost when a coveted high school player goes elsewhere.
Perhaps a more attractive playing style led by better guard play from Rice and Carlyle this season will help Indiana have more success with high school guards in the 2026 cycle, if that’s even a route they choose to recruit with greater vigor. Maybe it will even help with a 2025 guard like Mikel Brown.
But if we’ve learned nothing else over the last seven months, we’ve learned this: Don’t hit the panic button until the spring portal season ends.
For complete coverage of IU basketball recruiting, GO HERE.
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