One of the biggest storylines of the offseason, and heading into next season, for Indiana men’s basketball is the team’s revamped roster.
The Hoosiers have six new scholarship players, between transfer portal additions and freshmen. And they lost six players on the other side, notably program bedrock Trayce Jackson-Davis, key veterans Race Thompson and Miller Kopp, and freshman phenom Jalen Hood-Schifino.
The roster turnover provides Mike Woodson an opportunity to change the team’s playing style, after essentially entering the IU job with a forced hand with a roster already built around Jackson-Davis. But, especially in the offseason, it creates some challenges for the players.
The roster is more well-equipped to spread the floor more and play a more modern brand of basketball, but the players still have to adapt to that style. During a media availability Thursday morning, rising sophomore forward Malik Reneau said the team is still emphasizing some of the same concepts it did in the past, but added that some things are changing.
“We’re still emphasizing posting up. That’s just part of how we play. We probably won’t post up as much as last year, like we did with Trayce. But we’re still posting up, and it’s going to be a lot of ball screens, running up and down the court and getting out in transition, and getting easy buckets and stuff like that,” Reneau said. “So we’re trying to be a fast-paced team, get up and down the court, and defend.”
Reneau is encouraged by what he’s seen from IU’s frontcourt additions this offseason.
The forwards will be particularly key to the Hoosiers playing the style Reneau referenced, and he thinks this group is capable of that. Reneau, himself, is a big part of that. He said his game doesn’t change much with Jackson-Davis and Thompson gone — his post-up game is still his biggest strength, but he’ll look to expand in other areas where he can.
But his frontcourt mates, Oregon transfer Kel’el Ware and Ball State transfer Payton Sparks, are important to that style as well. And Reneau likes what he’s seen so far.
“I think we loaded up pretty well,” Reneau said. “You got Kel’el and we got Payton, and both pretty great skill players. Both can finish with both hands, can step out a little bit and shoot the ball, too. So you see a good fluence [sic] of where we’re trying to go with our frontcourt, and understanding that we don’t have Trayce anymore, so we’ve got to look somewhere else to find it.”
There are off-court impacts for IU, as well, in adapting to life without Jackson-Davis, Thompson, and Kopp. That group, among others, were IU’s main leaders for the last several years.
Of course, Xavier Johnson was set to be in that departed group entering last year. But after a broken foot cost him a majority of the season, he’s back for one more ride. And he, along with rising senior Trey Galloway, will step into a more prominent leadership role this year as an elder statesman for the Hoosiers.
A key part of the offseason is building team chemistry, and that’s only amplified with so many new faces on the team. Practices and workouts help that, in some ways, as the Hoosiers get used to playing with each other.
But there’s more to chemistry than that, and Reneau said the team is jelling quickly off the court as well. He said the players are around each other bonding basically all day.
“We have team breakfasts together, and everybody’s outgoing, so our team bonding is going to be great,” Reneau said. “It’s knowing everything on the court, understanding, and the older guys helping the younger guys or the new people coming in (with) what we need to do on the court and being mentally focused every time we step on the court together.”
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