ASSEMBLY HALL — Following a disappointing 2023-24 season, IU men’s basketball must find an identity going into this year. 

Last year’s team — while talented — didn’t have a consistent bread and butter which led to it losing all three of its signature nonconference games, starting 6-10 in Big Ten play and eventually missing the NCAA tournament. Heading into a season that could define Mike Woodson’s tenure as IU head coach, establishing a style of play is paramount. 

Pace is expected to be a pillar of the Hoosiers’ offense for the 2024-25 campaign. The team kept fifth-year guard Trey Galloway, who’s always been at his best in the open floor. Woodson also brought in transfer guards Myles Rice and Kannan Carlyle, who are wildly explosive off the bounce. 

Going into his fourth year, Woodson feels IU’s guards are “a lot quicker than” he’s had before in Bloomington. With that being the case, this team might zoom up and down the court throughout the season.

“I’d like to play a little bit quicker this year, where we’re not walking it up,” Woodson said at the annual institutional media day. “… I’d like to play a little bit faster on makes and that’s something that we’ve been working on since we put this team together this summer.” 

Playing fast creates so many advantages for an offense. Whether following a stop or made basket, pushing the ball up the floor is a wonderful way to create mismatches and easy looks for your players without running a set play. Plus, college basketball’s 30-second shot clock provides plenty of time to get into a set if a team’s initial fastbreak push is handled by the defense.

The Hoosiers haven’t emphasized running in the past under Woodson. Per KenPom, IU hasn’t been in the top 100 in the country in adjusted tempo since Woodson took over (although it ranked 48th in average offensive possession length in 2022-23). With the talent the Hoosiers possess this year, that may change.

“A natural basketball player doesn’t want to keep running up and down all night on the defensive end,” said Rice, who averaged 14.8 points and 3.8 assists for Washington State last year. “That gets tiring after a while. So for us, it’s about being in well-conditioned shape, and we’ve been doing a lot of conditioning so that’s how that’s gonna affect us and give us the advantage where we can get a lot of easy buckets early on, throughout the entire game, and down the stretch as well.” 

Oumar Ballo knows all about wearing teams out by playing fast. The 7-foot Arizona transfer has spent his entire college career running up and down the floor and getting easy looks. 

In Ballo’s three years with the Wildcats, they never finished lower than 16th in the country in adjusted tempo (and never were worse than a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament). He spent his freshman year with Gonzaga in 2020-21, and that national runner-up squad was seventh in adjusted tempo. 

Fast offenses often take an adjustment period for big men, but it won’t for Ballo. Under Tommy Lloyd — who was a Gonzaga assistant before taking over Arizona in 2022 — all Ballo did was run. The offensive system turned Ballo into a two-time first-team All-Pac-12 player.

“Sometimes we scored the ball within three seconds and then we’d get back to defense,” Ballo said of the tempo at Arizona. “It’s a fun offense.”

While Indiana’s offense likely won’t be an exact replica of what Ballo got used to at Arizona, the Hoosiers influx of talented ball-handlers alters what they can do. This team was handicapped by its lack of downhill threats last season, but that shouldn’t be an issue this year.

“Getting out and running is a big piece of my game that I can really bring to the table,” Galloway said. “So with those guards that we brought in and the guys that are coming back, I think it’s going to be a really good dynamic, and I think we’re going to be able to really play fast this year.” 

With the depth and athleticism IU has, it should be able to outpace teams in the open floor. If IU can find a way to become a high-volume, highly-efficient fastbreak team, it could lead to one of the nation’s most clinical offenses.