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Indiana basketball releases injury report ahead of matchup with Harvard

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Indiana basketball forward Anthony Walker
The Indiana basketball program released its injury report ahead of its matchup against Harvard on Sunday afternoon. (Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times-USA TODAY NETWORK)

The Indiana basketball program hits the hardwood for game number six of the 2023-24 season on Sunday afternoon and released its official injury report this morning.

The Big Ten began with its weekly availability report for football this season and announced that it would be conducting the same schedule with basketball. It was announced that programs will have to release their injury reports three hours before tip.

For Indiana, its injury report listed guard Xavier Johnson and forward Anthony Walker as questionable ahead of its matchup with Harvard.

Johnson injured his ankle late in last Thursday’s win over Wright State. He did play on Sunday against UConn and Monday against Louisville.

Johnson is averaging 12.0 points and 2.6 assists per game while shooting a team-high 50 percent (5-of-10) from three.

Walker is averaging 5.0 points and 2.4 rebounds in 12.8 minutes per game. He is coming off of his best performance in an Indiana basketball uniform, however. He had 11 points, seven rebounds and one block in 20 minutes in Indiana’s win over Louisville on Monday.

“We brought him on board because we thought he does a little bit of everything,” Indiana basketball head coach Woodson said of Walker earlier this season. “He’s been scoring and doing a lot of different things for us in practice, and I don’t want that to go the other way.”

The other scholarship player listed on the injury report is Jakai Newton, a four-star freshman who had knee surgery this offseason to clean up a previous surgery he had last winter. He continues to be out for the foreseeable future.

“He’s starting to move around a little bit. He ran a little bit on the treadmill. He’s been able to come out and walk through and hasn’t done a whole lot of the walk-through stuff but the stretching and the warm-up stuff prior to us actually getting going on the court,” Woodson said. ” … I think he’s moving in the right direction. How quickly he comes back, only time will tell. And then we’ve got to make a decision on what we’re going to do with him; is he healthy enough to play when he comes back? If not, then you might have to think about redshirting and things of that nature.

“We haven’t even talked about that. But, I mean, that’s on the back burner if that may occur. So we’ve just got to let nature take its course.”

Indiana faces Harvard at 4:30 pm ET on BTN.

SEE ALSO: 5 things we learned following IU’s showing at the Empire Classic

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Alec Lasley is the owner of Hoosier Illustrated, a comprehensive site covering news, updates and recruiting for Indiana University athletics. Alec has covered Indiana for six years and is a credentialed media member. He has previously worked for both Rivals and 247Sports.

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