As Indiana’s 2025 recruiting focus narrows, the portal will again loom large next spring
News broke Wednesday that Malachi Moreno, an IU recruiting target in the 2025 class, will announce his decision on Friday.
Moreno, a 6-foot-11 center from Georgetown, Kentucky, has made multiple trips to Bloomington and the Hoosier coaching staff has built a strong relationship with him. He’s considered one of the 30 best players in the country.
Despite that strong relationship Indiana worked to build, Moreno’s recruitment changed in the spring. John Calipari left Kentucky after 15 seasons for Arkansas and Mark Pope arrived in Lexington. Pope quickly identified Moreno as a guy the Wildcats wanted in the 2025 class and is now the frontrunner to land his commitment on Friday.
That shouldn’t be surprising, given Moreno’s high school, Great Crossing, is less than 20 miles from Rupp Arena.
Indiana still has plenty of terrific options on its recruiting board for the rising senior class – Braylon Mullins, Jalen Haralson, Trent Sisley, Bryson Tiller, Mikel Brown Jr., and Eric Reibe, to name a few – but the reality is the portal will be pivotal again for the Hoosiers next spring.
After landing one high school recruit in the 2024 cycle – Bryson Tucker – the Hoosiers added six transfer portal pieces in the offseason. Only two of them, Kanaan Carlyle and Myles Rice, have multiple seasons of eligibility remaining.
A glance at the Indiana basketball scholarship chart shows that Indiana will have at least six open spots on the 2025-26 roster, assuming no attrition from underclassmen, which is unlikely.
“That’s the new norm now, guys,” Mike Woodson said in late May at Huber’s Winery. “I mean, this is not like the Bob Knight days where you could build your team over three or four years and trust the process. You know, our process now is changing every year because you don’t know who’s coming and who’s going.”
According to our roster tracking for the 2024-25 season, 138 new scholarship players are entering the Big Ten next season. Of those 138, just over 63 percent are from the transfer portal. That’s 87 newcomers via the portal or an average of 4.8 per team versus 51 freshmen, an average of 2.8 per team.
On average, Big Ten teams will add over seven new players to their rosters for the 2024-25 season. Indiana has seven new players. It’s the new way of doing business in college basketball.
This is not to say the 2025 recruiting class isn’t important for the Hoosiers. It is. Indiana would be well served by hitting on multiple targets in the class, particularly the in-state options.
Braylon Mullins from Greenfield-Central is one of the country’s best, if not the best, shooters. Jalen Haralson is a terrific playmaker who can make an instant impact. Trent Sisley is a southern Indiana native who is talented, versatile and a player who can help a program win over multiple seasons.
Adding any of those three – or Tiller, Brown Jr. or Reibe – would jump-start Indiana’s roster building for the 2025-26 season. Several of them appear capable of playing right away.
But even if IU hits a home run and lands multiple high school players in the cycle, this reality doesn’t change: the portal will again be pivotal in building a contender. Every program is going to have attrition. And every portal is going to need experienced players to replace those it loses.
“It’s what it is. You just don’t know. I would love to grow a team with high school kids, they stay with me for four years, man, but those days are gone, man,” Woodson explained. “You’ll get a player that’s disgruntled and ‘hey, I want more minutes.’ I’m trying to put together a team where you can’t worry about minutes. It’s gotta be about team.
“And you gotta commit to team because then everything else takes care of itself, man. And that’s with any coach in college basketball. That’s what you gotta navigate, man, because everybody wants to play, everybody wants to go to the NBA, well, shit, that’s not realistic. You can’t play everybody 40 minutes. Everybody is not going to play in the NBA. And that’s being real from a guy that spent 34 years of his life there. It’s what it is.”
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