[IUFR] Film Analysis of IU's Top 3 Portal Targets

Over the last 48 hours, three "Crystal Balls" for top portal players have come in for Indiana. Coach Adragna takes a look at the players, their film, and their potential fits with IU next season.

With the season officially complete, the topic of choice for college basketball fans has shifted to the transfer portal.

For Indiana, the portal is heating up with visits and Crystal Balls — which are official recruiting predictions from 247Sports staff writers.

Side note: I can’t talk about crystal balls and college basketball without mentioning this Bob Knight clip.

Within the past couple of days, Travis Branham of 247 Sports has registered Crystal Balls to IU for:

• Myles Rice, G

• Kanaan Carlyle, G

• Oumar Ballo, C

In today’s film room, we’ll discuss each player and how they would fit in with Indiana if/when they ultimately make their commitment to the Hoosiers.

Myles Rice, G (Washington State)

In case you’re curious how I feel about Myles Rice, I tweeted this a few days ago.

Myles Rice is the type of player who can immediately change the dynamic of a team.

As a freshman at Washington State, he averaged 14ppg and 4apg for a tournament team that was seen as overachievers. Rice was a big part of that.

The downside that some fans will see is that Rice was just 27.5% from three — but hold that thought. More on this in a bit.

As the tweet above proclaims, Rice is great at running the show. He makes the right decisions in pick-and-rolls, he’s tremendous in transition, and he has a calm demeanor about him that others feed off of.

Defensively, Rice is a plus defender. That is significant for a Mike Woodson defense. He needs the head of the snake to make an impact defensively and Rice does just that.

Rice is also an inspirational story. He missed the 2022-23 season as he was battling cancer. He beat it and came out in 2023-24 with a tremendous season. He is extremely easy to root for.

Below is a video breakdown of Rice and some of the things he does well that he could bring to IU.

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Kanaan Carlyle, G (Stanford)

Carlyle, another freshman guard, also has a Crystal Ball in for Indiana.

Carlyle and Rice both are from the Atlanta area and have connections with IU Assistant Coach, Yasir Rosemond.

Carlyle had an up-and-down year at Stanford, with an injury mixed in, but his talent is apparent when you watch him play.

He averaged 11.5 ppg with 2.7 apg. Much like Rice, Carlyle also struggled from deep. He was 32% from beyond the arc (again, more on this below).

While his percentages struggled, Carlyle was a very solid spot up shooter, as he was in the 82nd percentile last season.

Carlyle was also solid in ball screens and dribble handoffs for his Stanford squad. Video of what Carlyle does well is below.

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Freshman to Sophomore Jumps

As was noted above, both Rice and Carlyle were freshmen last year. I highlighted what they did well, and noted that neither lit the nets on fire from beyond the arc.

While I think dynamic playmaking is more important for an offense than just ‘shooting,’ I understand the shooting concerns, so I wanted to address them a bit.

Overall, there were 210 freshmen in 2023 that took at least 25 threes and returned to D1 hoops for 2024.

Of those returnees, they took 7,576 more threes in 2024 but increased their collective percentage from 33% to 34%. That may seem small, but when factoring in the much higher volume, it showcases a solid jump.

68 players increased their percentage by 5% or more. That group took 2,705 more threes as sophomores but collectively raised their percentages from 29.3% as freshmen to 37.8% as sophomores.

47 players decreased their freshman -> sophomore percentage by 5% or more. As you can guess, the majority of these guys were lower volume as freshmen and increased their volume tremendously as sophomores.

As a whole, these 210 players bumped their average points per game from 6.4 ppg to 9.8 ppg as sophomores.

In summary, the sophomore to freshman jump is real.

That’s not to guarantee large jumps from Rice and Carlyle … but … free throw shooting numbers are usually a good indicator of whether those jumps are likely to happen. (A good free throw percentage tends to indicate good shooting form and touch, which can just take a little longer to translate to the college 3-point line.) As freshmen, Rice shot 81% from the line, and Carlyle shot 78%, respectively.

Also of note, when Rice and Carlyle squared off against each other on January 18th, Rice dropped in the win. Carlyle had 31.

Now that we’ve covered the two top guard portal guard prospects IU is focusing on — both of whom would plug major holes that plagued IU last season — let’s discuss the center prospect who also recently got a Crystal Ball to IU.