5 Intriguing Lineup Combinations From Indiana's Revamped Roster

As we sit here on April 24th, it appears Mike Woodson is building a roster that will have a number of options for how it can play this season. Here are some of my favorite combinations to think about.

Myles Rice and Kanaan Carlyle (vis @AdamHoward on Twitter)

One of the fun parts about the college basketball offseason — especially these days, with so much roster movement — is playing around with lineup combinations as new pieces are added to the roster.

This is an especially fun and cathartic activity coming off a season in which your team didn’t sniff the NCAA Tournament thanks to a number of factors — notably among them injuries and a lack of player development, which highlighted roster construction issues — that left Mike Woodson without many trusted lineup options last season.

But as we sit here on April 24th, with everyone expected to be healthy for November and everything still very theoretical and on paper, it appears the roster Mike Woodson and his staff are building for next season will have a number of options for how it can play.

Here are some of my favorite ones to think about …

1. Last year’s starters … with solid point guard play

• Rice

• Galloway

• Mgbako

• Reneau

• Ballo

Here is a stat that continues to surprise people:

According to the lineup rankings at EvanMiya.com, among five-man lineups that played at least 300 possessions together, Indiana’s regular starting five of Cupps / Galloway / Mgbako / Reneau / Ware was ranked #20 overall in the country in efficiency margin.

That is truly incredible given how overmatched Cupps seemed at times, despite his best efforts and some discernible growth toward the end of the season. Using Evan Miya’s BPR, which attempts to compute an individual player’s overall impact on his team, Cupps was a -0.28. (For comparison’s sake, Xavier Johnson delivered his career-low BPR last season of 2.25.)

Enter: Myles Rice.

The Pac-12 Freshman of the Year delivered a BPR of 3.65 last season for Washington State. Given that most players experience their biggest productivity and efficiency jumps between their freshman and sophomore seasons, it’s fair to expect Rice’s BPR to be even higher this season.

The other difference will be swapping Ballo in for Kel’el Ware.

Ware was Indiana’s most productive and important player last season, by both the eye test and the metrics. His BPR was 5.10. Now check Ballo’s at Arizona. His BPR last season was 6.36. The year prior it was 5.22. So barring something unforeseen, Indiana should also get more production out of the center spot than even the high level Ware delivered last season.

Mix in an expected sophomore jump from Mackenzie Mgbako, plus just moderate improvement from Reneau and Galloway, and even with the questions about shooting and defense it’s fairly easy to project this as one of the most efficient lineups in the country.

And if this is your starting lineup, that means you have a guy like Kanaan Carlyle coming off the bench to provide scoring punch against second units, which would be quite the upgrade over last season.

Speaking of Carlyle …

2. New starters … with Galloway as the 6th man

• Rice

• Carlyle

• Mgbako

• Reneau

• Ballo

We can’t know what Mike Woodson will do with his starting lineup, because I’m guessing Mike Woodson doesn’t even know yet what he’s going to do with his starting lineup.

But my guess is that Rice, Mgbako, Reneau, and Ballo will be starting, with that fifth spot going to either Galloway or Kanaan Carlyle, who officially signed with IU today after transferring from Stanford.

We broke down Carlyle’s game on yesterday’s edition of The Assembly Call.

Carlyle’s overall freshman numbers don’t jump off the page, but his freshman season needs a lot of context to fully evaluate. He showed the ceiling of an elite scorer and was efficient on catch-and-shoot opportunities (more efficient, in fact, than even Luke Goode). He also has some ability as a secondary creator.

To put it into a context many IU fans will understand, the statistical profile from Carlyle’s freshman season is very similar to Jalen Hood-Schifino’s.

Putting Carlyle in this lineup gives you a more reliable outside shooter than Galloway. And if Malik Reneau can continue to develop his face-up game to pull his defender a little farther away from the paint, there is some real potential here to put defenses in a bind running pick and rolls between Rice and Ballo, with two shooters the defense has to respect on the wings, plus Reneau ready to feast on a one-on-one matchup.

Again, there are some questions here defensively, and you have to believe in the shooting development of Carlyle and Mgbako (which I think there is plenty of reason to do), but this lineup projects to have so much more dynamism that almost any lineup we’ve seen at IU since 2016. Any development from Malik as a scorer away from the basket will make it even tougher to handle.

Plus you have the added bonus of Galloway returning to his role as energy guy off the bench, who could still close games in the second half.

Okay, those are the two easy lineups to project. Both of them are fun and full of potential.

Now let’s dig into some other combinations that we surely won’t see that often, but that could theoretically be used to great effect in the right matchup.

Note: for purposes of this discussion, I am projecting Luke Goode to eventually commit to IU. As you may have seen, he’s taking an official visit to IU on Thursday and Friday of this week.

Even if the Goode recruitment unexpectedly falls through for some reason, it appears Indiana is committed to finding a player who fits his profile for the bench. I just don’t think they’ll find one who is a better or more proven fit than Goode, so hopefully he commits on his visit.

If Goode does commit elsewhere, I think you could sub Anthony Leal into the lineups below where I have Goode and reasonably expect 80-85% of the impact. Goode’s BPR last season was 3.09 in an elite offense; Leal’s was 1.46 playing through Indiana’s struggles.

3. The Catch-and-Shoot Lineup

• Rice

• Carlyle

• Mgbako

• Goode

• Reneau/Ballo

It’s been rare to see Indiana have three legitimate shooters on the floor together in recent seasons. This lineup would have it.

Here are the catch-and-shoot numbers for the “shooters” in this group:

• Carlyle: 1.19 points per shot on 53 attempts (59.4% eFG)

• Mgbako: 1.01 points per shot on 145 attempts (50.7% eFG) — and this number goes way up if you remove his awful shooting during non-conference play.

• Goode: 1.15 points per shot on 133 attempts (57.5% eFG)

And Reneau isn’t half bad either, clocking in at 1.02 points per shot on 44 attempts (51.1% eFG).

Think about how Nebraska spreads the floor with credible shooters, then has open lanes for driving and cutting. You could envision something similar here for IU, with the added bonus of an efficient post player who can go punish a mismatch on the block.

Again, defensive and rebounding concerns abound with Ballo and Galloway off the court. That’s why this would be a situational lineup. But given that Reneau, Goode, and Mgbako all are at least 6’7 and have defensive rebounding percentages of at least 12.2% (plus Rice and Carlyle were both about 9% as freshmen), you could get away with it, and perhaps even dominate with it, if the offense is clicking and shots are falling.

If Reneau doesn’t improve his shooting, Ballo might be a better fit with this group because he is better in ball screens. Rice/Ballo ball screens with three reliable shooters around the perimeter will be a bear to defend.

4. The Multi-Attacker Lineup

• Rice

• Carlyle

• Galloway

• Mgbako

• Ballo

This lineup drops Mgbako down the four and runs with three guards who can all score, create, and spot-up to varying degrees of above average.

The reason why Ballo fits better than Reneau in this lineup is because of his ball screen ability. Reneau has not been very effective as the roll man in PnRs, but Ballo has been. With Mgbako on the wing, and any of Rice, Carlyle, or Galloway able to run a PnR with Ballo while the others spot up, this lineup can attack you from anywhere.

The weakness here is that Rice wasn’t great in catch-and-shoot opportunities, and Galloway’s shooting has been all over the map. But if you assume one of those two runs most of the PnRs, with Carlyle and Mgbako flanking on the wings, it’s a lot for a defense to handle.

On the other end, Mgbako and Ballo need to be able to handle the opposing 4 and 5 and clean the glass, while Rice, Carlyle, and Galloway offer a switchable trio on the perimeter. Because of the offense/defense balance here, I wouldn’t be shocked if this 5-man group ends up having the highest efficiency margin of any 5-man lineup for IU next season.

5. The New and Improved All-Bench Lineup

I know, I know. Most of us don’t support Mike Woodson’s recurring early-season strategy of playing lineups comprised of all bench players.

Bench players tend to be bench players for a reason, so playing them all together can highlight the individual weaknesses of each player and lead to periods of inefficient play that might not cost Indiana games but do hurt in the metrics — which legitimately matter in college hoops, whether any of us like it or not.

But if we are to assume that this strategy will continue for the fourth straight season, I at least want the all-bench lineups to make more basketball sense than the ones we saw last season.

And this season’s roster is shaping up to make that a possibility.

• Cupps

• Carlyle/Galloway

• Tucker

• Goode

• Backup Big

There are several potential iterations of this group, depending on who starts and what Mike Woodson does with Cupps. I tend to think Cupps will be given a chance to run the second unit, paired with either Carlyle or Galloway.

Either way, what makes this unit fun is the Tucker/Goode combo at the 3/4. Goode offers reliable shooting and a veteran presence who pairs nicely with Tucker’s length, athleticism, and inexperienced talent. It’s tough to know what to expect from Tucker as a freshman, but I don’t think his outside shot projects particularly well right away. So he’ll do more of his scoring in the midrange, on cuts, and in transition. He’ll also need some help defensively.

This lineup has some transition ability, and also is theoretically switchable defensively 2-4. We’ll have to see what backup big the Hoosiers bring in. Perhaps that guy adds some shooting; but at a minimum, IU just needs reliable rim protection and rebounding from that spot.

Leal could obviously function in this lineup as well, but he’s a little redundant with Goode.

The wild card is Jakai Newton. Despite remaining very bullish on Jakai’s future, I’m going into this season expecting very little from him due to the fact that he’s missed most of the last two seasons of competitive basketball. But he has the potential to be a dynamic member of the bench unit whenever his body and skills get up to speed with the college game.

The bottom line is that Indiana is projecting to have a nice mix of experience, proven production, and interesting young potential on its bench. That should make the bench minutes more productive than last season’s, no matter how Woody chooses to distribute them.

And here is one more fun combo that you wouldn’t want over-exposed, but could succeed in the right matchup …

Bonus: The Ultimate Shooting Lineup

• Rice

• Carlyle

• Galloway

• Mgbako

• Goode

That’s three strong catch-and-shoot guys, two proven creators, and a couple of undersized players at the 4 and 5 who have at least proven an ability to get tough rebounds.

If you’re losing and need to start firing up 3s to come back, and the opposition doesn’t have an on-the-block 5, this lineup could work in a pinch. And if Reneau becomes a reliable 3-point shooter, you could swap him in for Galloway and not give up quite as much on the glass or defending the post.

Final Thought

I’m sure this is a topic we’ll revisit often as the move through offseason.

Any way you look at it, even if you are viewing Indiana’s offseason roster rebuild through a skeptical eye, there is going to be more raw talent and proven ability on this year’s roster than last year’s. That alone will raise the floor for Indiana basketball, with a legit ceiling there to be had if all the pieces come together.

We’ll have to wait many months to start seeing if that will happen. But I don’t think we need to wait to discuss some of the potential combinations we’ll see on the court, and the more entertaining style of play they should bring to Assembly Hall.

Hopefully there will be a lot more winning too, because ultimately that’s all that really matters.

Now over to you …

• Which lineup described above are you most excited about?

• Which lineup not listed here are you interested to see?

• What piece do you think IU is missing that could unlock another lineup archetype you’d be interested in seeing?