Quotes: Everything IU basketball junior wing Jaeden Mustaf said after Thursday’s practice
- Alex Bozich
- 2h ago
IU basketball wing Jaeden Mustaf was the program’s first commitment from the transfer portal in April.
Mustaf spent the first two seasons of his college career at Georgia Tech and averaged 9.4 points, 3.7 rebounds and two assists over 26.2 minutes per game.
Mustaf was one of three IU players who spoke to the media on Thursday morning after practice and you can watch the full interview here.
Here’s a full transcript of Mustaf’s comments from Thursday’s media session in the locker room at Assembly Hall:
On the biggest takeaway so far working with his new teammates:
“I feel like a lot of us are new, so just coming together, building that chemistry and just trying to help lead however I can. But also just building that chemistry and learning new things.”
On the adjustment to Bloomington and the IU program:
“I mean, of course, of course, there’s some things that are different. It’s just things you pick up on. Coaches make it easy for us to just pick up on things and learn it fast.”
On the energy with this group and the fun they’re having together on the floor:
“I feel like practice is supposed to be hard, but it’s also supposed to be, I mean, you’re playing basketball, so it’s supposed to be fun. You’re supposed to have fun with it. So the coaches, of course, they push us.
“But at the same time, that’s what we need to get better. And so it’s fun, it’s basketball. Doing something we love to do.”
On what drew him to IU out of the transfer portal:
“Of course, the coaching staff. Of course, Kenny (Johnson) was here. But aside from Kenny, I mean, (Coach) DeVries, Coach Rod (Clark), two other coaches.
“I pretty much, I kind of knew some of the guys. And then on top of that, it’s Indiana, it’s a Blue Blood. It’s hard to turn that down twice.”
On his impressions of Darren Harris, Markus Burton and Bryce Lindsay:
“Dogs, all great guards. Guards that can score, facilitate and then we all kind of get along. I think we all play off each other.”
On what he’s trying to work on this offseason and what the next step is for him as a player:
“I think just growing more and more into a leadership role, using my voice. And then basketball-wise, I would say just fine-tune everything, continue to get shots up, continue to work on the shot, make sure that’s right. And then ball handling, make sure everything, just really fine-tune a lot of things.
“Just wanna be able to help the team out however I can.”
On whether he feels like the 3-point shot can be a weapon for him next season:
“I mean, yeah, definitely. I shoot all the time after practice, all the time. And last year, I felt like I had a good shooting year.
And just how we played in certain roles and stuff like that, it was like, no, I didn’t shoot as many as I probably would have thought from that percentage that I had. But here, they kinda encourage us to be confident and shoot our shots.”
On the importance of putting pressure on the defense and getting to the rim:
“My body is my advantage. So just continuing to learn more and more how to use that, watching film and just seeing different things, seeing how I can use my body more and more to get downhill or also be able to make plays with my teammates. And just putting pressure on the defense, you wanna get paint touches and stuff like that.
“So I’ve kinda been good at that, so I try to continue that.”
On whether the rim protection of Aiden Sherrell and Samet Yigitoglu will allow him to be more aggressive defensively:
Definitely, I think for me, it’s like I wanna be aggressive on the ball and I kinda take pride on the ball playing defense and stuff. So the times where it’s gonna happen, the times where you do get broke down or blown by or something like that, having that back there behind you, it’s like a comfort for you. Because you know they gotta go deal with seven footers, two of them down in the paint and that’s kinda hard to finish over.”
(Photo credit: IU Athletics)
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