Welcome to The Brief, a space for bigger-picture observations.
After beating Western Kentucky 79-74 on Sunday evening, the Hoosiers finished out their exhibition season 3-0. With the caveat that these were preseason games and we shouldn’t draw hard conclusions, let’s take a look at three ways IU basketball is looking different under Darian DeVries in his second season.
Offensive rebounding percentage is up. Way up.
Indiana rebounded 40 percent of its misses against Butler. Against North Carolina, that number jumped to 49 percent. Those would have been Indiana’s two highest offensive rebounding marks of last season, eclipsing the 37.5 percent the Hoosiers recorded twice (Chicago State and Maryland). IU dipped to 33 percent against Western Kentucky, but that performance would still have ranked fifth-best last season. The Hoosiers overcame a lackluster first half of offensive rebounding (26%) by snagging 40 percent of their misses in the second half. That late surge was crucial to generating second-chance points down the stretch in their comeback win against the Hilltoppers.
Samet Yigitoglu led the way in the preseason with nine offensive rebounds. Aiden Sherrell, Sam Alexis and Jaeden Mustaf all had seven.
DeVries revamped the roster via the transfer portal, putting more of a premium on size. He’s also put a heavy emphasis on offensive rebounding to start the season. So far, the results have been encouraging.
Block percentage is up. Just not quite as much.
A larger, more defense focused frontline is also producing some strong results for the team’s block percentage. While Indiana’s 25.7 percent mark against Wisconsin last season remains the top performance of the DeVries era, the Hoosiers’ numbers across their three exhibition games stack up well with the best of last season.
Its block percentage against Western Kentucky (20%) would have been second-best overall last season. The 12.2 percent against North Carolina would have slotted in third, while its mark against Butler (9.4%) would have ranked 10th.
The frontline led the charge here. Alexis had seven blocks, Yigitoglu had four and Sherrell blocked two shots. Markus Burton, Vaughn Karvala, Prince-Alexander Moody and Trent Sisley also each recorded a block.
Outside of Alexis (6.2%, 122nd nationally), Indiana didn’t really have a shot-blocking threat last season. But by adding Yigitoglu (5.5%, 155th nationally) and Sherrell (8.5% 36th nationally) to the big-man rotation, Indiana now has three shot blockers that have a track record of success thwarting opponents at the rim.
The shots are easier.
Last season, the Hoosiers struggled to make things easy on themselves, something I chronicled at the end of the year as their ultimate undoing. But increased offensive rebounding helps address that problem in two ways.
First, it creates opportunities for close looks at the basket via tip-ins and putbacks from your biggest players. Second, those players can also pass out to the perimeter and find teammates for open 3-point looks against a defense that’s scrambling.
These were the kind of shots Indiana just didn’t get enough of a season ago, but happened in the preseason.
Indiana scored 25 second-chance points against Butler, 17 against North Carolina and 12 against Western Kentucky.
Below is a supercut of some of IU’s buckets generated from offensive rebounding from the North Carolina and Western Kentucky games. If Indiana can keep this going in the regular season, its offense adds another dimension.
