Indiana basketball releases injury report ahead of matchup with Ohio State

The Indiana basketball program hits the hardwood for game number 15 of the 2023-24 season on Saturday night and released its official injury report this afternoon.

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 Malik Reneau as questionable.

Johnson returned this week for Indiana’s 86-70 loss to Nebraska after missing the previous seven games with a foot injury.

He struggled in 15 minutes, going scoreless with three assists and four turnovers.

“Well, it’s been tough. Xavier hadn’t really played much basketball, when you go back to last season and missing the seven games I think he missed this season so far. Mentally it’s been tough on him,” Indiana basketball head coach Mike Woodson said this week. “ … I went into the game the other night knowing that he wasn’t going to play a lot of minutes because we couldn’t play him a lot of minutes. He hadn’t played much in practice. He wasn’t real happy about that.

“He only played, I think, 14 minutes, but it was an awful 14 minutes. I kind of shared that with him yesterday because, hey, he was trying to do too much in the short period of time that he played. He’s just got to let it come to him and relax and play.”

In the season he is averaging 9.0 points, 2.1 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game.

For Malik Reneau, he has been on and off the availability report most of the season with minor injuries.

Reneau is averaging a team-high 16.1 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game. He has two of his highest scoring career games over his last three outings.

“He’s grown, man,” Woodson said this week. “You’re starting to see some of that now, and a lot of it is because he’s mentally a little more mature than he was a year ago, and he’s trying to — he’s figured out how to stay on the floor somewhat this year versus sitting next to us over there on the bench, and in doing that, he’s doing a lot of good things for us on the basketball floor, which is kind of nice to see.”

Indiana basketball takes on Ohio State at 8:00 pm ET on FOX.

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