Banner Moment: The #1 Reason to Believe in Indiana's Rebuilt Roster

Indiana's rebuilt roster will enter next season with more proven individual scoring ability than any IU team in recent memory. How much does that matter? Jerod digs into the numbers.

May 03, 2024

[Editor’s note: Trying something new here. This an expanded writeup of the Banner Moment I opened last night’s show with.]

This week’s Banner Moment occurred for me on Wednesday evening, when I decided to do a little digging into the stats of our newcomers.

Specifically, I was curious about the demonstrated individual scoring ceilings of our projected roster for next season and how it compared to last year’s scoring-challenged IU team.

Here’s what I found …

Last season versus next season

Last season, Indiana did not have one player who played at least 40% of minutes who also entered the season with a career-high above 20 points.

Xavier Johnson’s career high is 32 points, in a game while he played at Pitt.
Payton Sparks’ career high is 24 points, in a game while he played at Ball State.
But neither of them played at least 40% of minutes for IU last season, so they don’t count for this analysis. (What good is their scoring ceiling if they aren’t on the court much?)

While Trey Galloway, Malik Reneau, and Kel’el Ware would all score at least 28 points in a game at some point last season, none of the three had demonstrated that kind of scoring ceiling before the season started.

As you’ll see here in a bit, entering a season with players who have proven they can score at a high level is far more predictive of success than entering a season with players who merely have the potential to score at a high level.

With last year as our baseline for comparison, let’s look at the demonstrated individual scoring ceilings for next season’s projected roster.

Here are the current career-high scoring totals for Indiana’s projected top six players:

Myles Rice: 35
Malik Reneau: 34
Kanaan Carlyle: 31
Oumar Ballo: 30
Trey Galloway: 28
Mackenzie Mgbako: 24

The delicious irony here is there are plenty of people — me included — who expect Mackenzie Mgbako to lead IU in scoring this season, yet he actually has the lowest single-game career high among this group of teammates. It’s a testament to how much more scoring depth IU will enter next season with.

I mean, look at the list again. That’s six guys who have already demonstrated they can score at least 24 points in a college basketball game. If you want to know why so many people are bullish about Indiana’s offensive potential for next season, that’s a big reason.

The Xs and Os are important … but not as important as the Jimmies and the Joes.

Okay, but is this just anecdotal from Indiana’s last two seasons, or does it actually matter that rosters have demonstrated this high-ceiling scoring ability before the season starts?

Here’s evidence to suggest it matters

Full disclosure: I didn’t do an exhaustive study here. I’m not a professional statistician or analytics expert. But almost every piece of anecdotal evidence I looked at followed a similar, predictable pattern that makes logical sense.

Let’s look at a few key pieces of evidence that suggest the amount of high-end scoring depth a team enters the season with matters.

National title winners

If you look at every national champion since 2012, when Kentucky won with the freshmen-laden Anthony Davis team, every single one of those teams have had at least two key rotation pieces who entered the season with career highs of at least 25 points.

In fact, all but three of these teams had at least one key player who entered that season already with a career-high of 30 or more and at least one more player in the high-20s. (Several NCAA champions had four or five players who fit this criteria.)

Indiana’s recent teams

Next, if you look at Indiana’s six NCAA Tournament teams since 2012, each of those teams had at least one player who entered the season with a career high of 30 points or more and at least one other player with a career high of 22 or more points.

For example:

Entering the 2023 season, Trayce had a career high of 43 points and Miller Kopp had a career high of 28.
Entering the 2013 season, Christian Watford had a career high of 30 points, while Cody Zeller (26) and Jordan Hulls (28) had each demonstrated an ability to score in the high-20s.
Interestingly, the 2015 team gets the closest to missing the criteria — with Yogi’s 30 points and Troy’s career high of 22. That team barely made the NCAA Tournament.

How does that compare to Indiana’s six non-tournament teams during that stretch? None of them met the scoring criteria.

For example:

The 2019 team had Juwan Morgan with a career high of 34 entering the season, but no other teammates with a career high of 20 or more.
The 2020 team had three players with career highs of 22 or more, but no none higher than 26.

To reiterate: this year’s Indiana team will open the season with SIX players who have career highs of 24 or more points, and four of those already have career highs of 30 or more. It’s pretty clear which group of recent IU teams the new roster is most like.

Purdue’s recent teams

I noticed this trend with Purdue’s recent teams as well. Look at their five most recent seasons:

2024 (#3 in KenPom): Edey with a career high entering season of 38, plus five other players with career highs of 24 or more.
2023 (#7): David Jenkins with a career high entering season of 33, plus two others at 25 or greater.
2022 (#14): Trevion Williams with a career high entering season of 36, plus three others with career highs of 23 or more.
2021 (#25): Trevion with career high of 36, plus one other with career high of 23.
2020 (#24 but 16-15 record and would have missed tournament): Jahaad Proctor entered season with a career high of 35 from his time at High Point, but no other regulars entered the season with a career high greater than 21.

You can see Purdue’s success get bigger and bigger as Matt Painter built rosters with more and more demonstrated scoring ability entering the season — culminating with their national title game appearance this past season.

Here’s the takeaway

In a sport that continues to tilt in the direction of offense, having as many individual players who can “go off” on a given night is essential.

In recent seasons, Indiana has had very few paths to victory. All-time great players like Trayce Jackson-Davis could sometimes drag IU to victory, but if one or two key players were shut down or struggling, it was often lights out for Indiana’s chances to win.

This season? Heck, depending on who starts between Carlyle and Galloway, Indiana will have at least one bench player with a career-high of 28 or more points. How many other teams in America will enter the season with that level of demonstrated scoring punch? (And note that all six of Indiana’s players produced those career highs while playing at the Power 5 level.)

That’s what makes this Indiana roster so intriguing: it will finally enter a season with a healthy handful of proven bucket-getters.

It’s about time.

Indiana hasn’t had a top-25 offense since the 2016 season. And IU’s average offensive efficiency rank since 2016 is just 70.5, with a low of 105th last season.

Look, I still have plenty of questions about how all of this is going to look come November, especially on defense. But I’ll be very surprised if this collection of proven offensive talent doesn’t coalesce into one of the 25-best offenses in the country when it’s all said and done — and that’s even with my misgivings about IU’s offensive philosophy baked in. At some point, the scoring talent transcends the system.

Granted, if this Indiana team truly has visions of banners, or even a Final Four run, just being top-25 won’t not be enough. All but one champion since 2012 has had a top-10 offense. This is where the system maximizing the talent comes in — which might come in the form of IU decreasing its percentage of post-ups, focusing more on the offensive glass, or trading as many long 2s as possible for 3s, or preferably all three.

But there will be plenty of time for those discussions in the future.

For now, while we enjoy the offseason rebuild Mike Woodson has nearly completed, I’m willing to set aside concerns about the defense and the offensive reaching its ceiling. Why? Because even with conservative projections, this roster is likely to deliver offensive production that we haven’t seen since Tom Crean departed — which will be a sight for sore eyes.

So while Indiana’s defense will have to come together for this IU team to compete for a Big Ten title and deep tournament run, the offensive firepower alone should at least set the floor at being a top 4/5 team in the conference with a return to the NCAA Tournament.

That’s a big step forward for a program that bottomed out last season, with the possibility of it turning into a leap that could make the 2024-25 season one to remember.

Discussion

What do you think about the offensive ability of Indiana’s projected roster for next season?
How much do you think it matters that a team has several sources of demonstrated high-end scoring ability entering a season?
What is your gut feeling for how high Indiana’s offense will be ranked this season?

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