Inside the Numbers: Is There Any Hope For Indiana's Atrocious Rebounding?

Jerod analyzes how bad Indiana's rebounding has been, why there may be reason for hope, and how important Malik Reneau's presence has been so far this season.

Photo courtesy of IU Athletics.

Here are a few numbers that have caught my eye through four games:

1. Indiana is the worst major conference rebounding team in the country

The rebounding numbers you are about to see are hideous.

Seriously, if you dressed up as these rebounding numbers for Halloween, you wouldn’t be allowed around small children.

And to put them in proper context, keep in mind that Indiana’s current strength of schedule is just 233rd in the country, with three games against teams who were decidedly smaller and less athletic than Indiana.

Ready? Have some cold water to splash in your eyes after they start burning upon seeing these numbers?

Okay, here we go.

• Indiana is currently grabbing just 21.1% of its own missed shots. That is 332nd in the country.

• On the other end of the court, Indiana is currently allowing opponents to grab 35.3% of their misses. That is 311th in the country.

Here is the list of major conference teams — most of which have also played relatively easy schedules so far this season — currently ranked 300th or below in either category:

• Florida State is 333rd in offensive rebounding percentage allowed (37.9%). They are good on the other end, however, grabbing 34.2% of their own misses.

• DePaul is 315th in offensive rebounding percentage (22.7%) and 312th in offensive rebounding percentage allowed (35.4%).

That’s it.

In other words, there are only two other power conference teams with even one of their rebounding rates in the bottom 300 of the country, and only one with both in the bottom 300 — a school, DePaul, that is perpetually the butt of college basketball jokes.

And Indiana is worse than even them.

There is just no way to contextualize Indiana’s early-season rebounding in any way other than to say it’s been really, really, ridiculously bad.

And for a team that doesn’t get extra offensive efficiency from beyond the arc, it is going to be extremely difficult to put the math of winning basketball in our favor giving up this massive of an advantage on the glass.

But wait!

As bad as it is, there may be some reason for optimism …

2. Indiana can gain a significant rebounding bump if veterans just start rebounding like they always have

Mike Woodson has talked a lot about getting more rebounding from his guards. And here’s the thing: he's not asking for anything they haven't done before.

In his two seasons at Indiana, Xavier Johnson's DR% (the percentage of available defensive rebounds he gets while on the court) has been 13.1% and 13.2%. Those are rock solid numbers.

But this season? X’s DR% is all the way down to 6.2%, which is well below his career low of 9.3% as a freshman at Pitt.

Yikes.

Trey Galloway’s DR%s at IU have been 8.4%, 7.5%, 9.2%. This season? It’s down to just 3.3%. It’s hard to fathom how that is even possible for a guy who plays as hard and tough as Trey does.

And they aren't the only guys operating below their track records.

• Anthony Walker grabbed 15.7% & 14.8% of defensive rebounds before dipping to 10.0% last season at Miami. This season? He’s even lower at 9.5%.

• Payton Sparks grabbed 21.2% & 22.0% the last two seasons at Ball State. This season? 13.3%.

• Malik Reneau was at 18.8% last year as a freshman. This season, he’s down to 13.6%.

To be fair, it’s not all bad from an individual standpoint.

• Kudos to Kel'el Ware for stepping his game up so far (21.9% as a freshman to Oregon to 26.1% so far this season). He’ll have to keep that up against players of similar size and length as the schedule stiffens.

• Mackenzie Mgbako, despite struggling in almost every element of the college game so far, has grabbed a few impressive rebounds and is at a solid 13.2%.

• CJ Gunn and Kaleb Banks are each up a tick so far from their freshman numbers.

• Gabe Cupps at 9.6% is solid for a freshman guard.

It should, of course, be noted that all of these numbers stand the chance of being noisy given how small the sample size is. But the results so far have been so extremely negative that they warrant acknowledgement and examination anyway.

Which begs the question: what the hell is going on?

Clearly there are defensive issues affecting Indiana’s rebounding. Scrambling to cover 3-point shooters on the perimeter can leave guys out of preferred rebounding position, plus 3-point misses tend to be longer and less predictable. That surely has something to do with it.

But seeing this many veteran players be so far off their established averages leads me to believe it’s much more than that.

Indiana was a below average rebounding team last season (197th and 205th in the two team team rebounding rates) despite having one of the best individual rebounders in the country in Trayce Jackson-Davis. (They were better the year prior when Race Thompson was healthy and providing a second reliable rebounder.)

Is rebounding just not something Mike Woodson emphasizes? I can only go by what I see on the court for 40 minutes at a time, and we certainly don’t look like a team that has spent much time practicing rebounding fundamentals.

Or is there just something so disjointed about this new roster as guys try to find comfort levels in their roles that it’s throwing everything off, and rebounding is simply the most obvious symptom?

I don’t know the answers. None of us do. Those just seem like the most reasonable questions to be asking.

I do know this:

• Indiana’s rebounding has to improve drastically for this season to not spiral out of control.

• The surest path to improvement is veterans rebounding closer to their established standards, which doesn’t seem like a difficult ask.

The massive drop in rebounding productivity from X and Trey, the two longest-tenured veterans in the rotation, despite Mike Woodson’s continued insistence that they rebound better, is currently the loudest canary in the coal mine for me that something is off with the team right now. If Woody’s message isn’t getting through to those two, it stands little chance of getting through to anyone else.

It’s the #1 thing to watch for today when IU plays Louisville. It has to change, right away.

3. Indiana plays its best when Malik Reneau is on the court

Most IU fans have noticed how much more effective Indiana has been both offensively and defensively with Malik Reneau on the court so far this season.

It’s why his improvement in terms of foul rate has been so important early in the season. So far, Malik is committing just 3.4 fouls per 40 minutes after committing 6.8 fouls per 40 minutes last season.

The UConn game was a great example of why this foul improvement must sustain. Indiana lost the game by 20 points, but the Hoosiers were just -5 with Malik on the court. The final score may have been much more competitive if Malik could have played 32-33 minutes instead of just 27.

And that game was not an outlier. The numbers show the massive gulf in how Indiana has performed with its new post anchor on the court.

In Malik’s 118 minutes of playing time this season, the Hoosiers have a Net Rating of 14.97 — which means the Hoosiers are 14.97 points better per 100 possessions than their opponent. That’s tops on the team.

Now get this …

In the 42 minutes Malik has been off the court, Indiana’s Net Rating is -40.13. That’s a difference of roughly 55 points per 100 possessions, which is outrageous.

And while it has absolutely been impacted by Malik’s ability to feast on overmatched mid-major bigs, he also went 7-9 from the field against UConn, so it’s not like even the defending champs showed much of an ability to slow him down.

Again, it’s early in the season, and it’s only four games, so the numbers will be noisy. But this particular set of numbers matches the eye test. This team can feel rudderless offensively without Malik on the court; and despite his defensive challenges, he’s still one of the “veterans” who understands the defense best.

For purposes of comparison, here are how these on/off numbers play out for the other starters:

• Xavier Johnson: Net Rating of +12.59 when on the court / -19.63 when off the court

• Kel’el Ware: +4.74 on / -14.64 off

• Trey Galloway: +1.41 on / 0 off

• Mackenzie Mgbako: +10.0 on / -7.79 off

In those last few numbers, you can see the limitation of lineup data like this. No one would argue Mackenzie Mgbako has been more impactful than Trey Galloway or similarly impactful to Kel’el Ware. So you have to take these numbers with grains of salt and properly contextualize them.

But seeing Malik and then Xavier Johnson have such an outsized impact on Indiana’s performance seems reasonable based on what we know of this roster and what we’ve seen through four games. And UConn’s dominance of IU with those two off the court due to foul trouble helps to skew the early-season numbers even more.

---

Are there are any numbers you’ve seen while combing through box scores, team stats, or the advanced analytics that really stand out to you?

Premium subscribers can comment below. Let’s discuss.

---