This off-season has seen a ton of change for the Indiana Hoosiers’ men’s basketball team. Plenty of players have come and gone, seemingly just interchangeable pieces to many. Mike Woodson, Indiana head coach, is not so random, however. He is a man with a vision, a plan to reshape a roster that–at first–was not entirely his. Now, that vision includes a gifted transfer guard from Stanford named Kanaan Carlyle.
Carlyle is a former consensus five-star recruit who put up good first-year numbers in his one season with the Cardinal. A dynamic 6’3″ player who fits in either guard spot, his potential had him regarded by many as one of the top 10-20 transfer players in the entire country. Perhaps his most noteworthy performance came against Washington State, a game in which Carlyle dropped over 30 points; so too did Washington State guard Myles rice, who will now share the same backcourt as Carlyle.
With Rice as the Hoosiers’ point man, Carlyle will play opposite him on the wing, using his combination of speed and range to attack opposing defenses on all three levels of scoring. The resulting attention should prevent double-teams against the Hoosiers’ vaunted frontcourt, meaning that Indiana can now field a lineup that will generate more offense than, say, what last year’s team was able to do. That, combined with Woodson’s attention to detail when it comes to defense, should yield a more balanced overall approach that allows the Hoosiers to compete with higher-level teams in and out of the Big Ten Conference.
This is the plan that Woodson has clearly had in mind all along. The departure of six scholarship players, combined with a pre-existing open scholarship, allowed him the opportunity to restock the roster with players of his choosing. Bear in mind, he’s only had two years so far to bring in his own recruiting classes. His first year was spent retaining Archie Miller recruits–and convincing Trayce Jackson-Davis and Race Thompson to stay–giving him a lot of players to coach whom he had no say in importing. Now, he’s got a rising star freshman in McDonald’s All-American Bryson Tucker, plus the incoming transfers of Carlyle, Rice, and former Arizona center Oumar Ballo. All that, and he still has three more scholarships left to offer to round things out. He’s setting his sights on the players he wants, that fit his way of doing things on and off the court, and he’s bringing them in at a rapid pace.
The onus is now on him to coach these players to their vast potential. Chef Woody needs to get the ingredients together in just the right way. It’s safe to say, however, that his ability to recognize talent at the college level is keen, and that he’s putting Indiana in the right position to be a destination for players that want to win and be part of something bigger than themselves at the same time. All he needs to do is ride the momentum he’s built into the summer and beyond, getting these promising players to gel with his vision, and the sky is the limit for the Hoosiers.
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