Indiana basketball releases injury report ahead of season opener vs FGCU

The Indiana basketball program gets its season underway on Tuesday night against Florida Gulf Coast and released its official injury report this afternoon.

The Big Ten began with its weekly availability report for football this season and announced earlier this week 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 Payton Sparks (ankle) as questionable, and Jakai Newton (knee) and Jordan Rayford (lower body) as out.

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Sparks played seven minutes in the first exhibition game for Indiana basketball against UIndy. He had two points, two rebounds and one assist before exiting with an ankle injury in the second half.

He would not return and would miss Indiana’s second exhibition against Marian on Friday.

Sparks is a transfer from Ball State who averaged 13.4 points and 8.6 rebounds in 62 games with the Cardinals.

Both Newton and Rayford missed the two exhibition games.

Newton is a four-star freshman who had knee surgery this offseason to clean up a previous surgery he had last winter.

Indiana basketball head coach Mike Woodson provided an update on Newton’s progress this week.

“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.”

Rayford is a transfer from Air Force this offseason and is a walk-on guard.

Tip is scheduled for 6:30 pm ET tonight.

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