‘Indiana is going to be a top ten team this year.’ Will Indiana basketball live up to these high expectations?

When you look at the overall grand scheme of things, Indiana basketball did not have the best of season last year, that we obviously know by now. Yeah they finished in the top half of the Big Ten at No. 6, but failed to win 20 games or make the NCAA Tournament for the first in Mike Woodson’s tenure as head coach.

Last season was one that almost every Indiana basketball fan would like to move on from and leave in the past. This upcoming season however, the Hoosiers are considered a top-10 team in the country?

Yup, that is a real possibility.

“Indiana is going to be a top ten team this year,” The Field of 68’s Rob Dauster said.

Mike Woodson and the Indiana basketball staff has done an outstanding job this offseason and are track to correct the mistakes that were made with this roster from a season ago. The kept an outstanding core together of Malik Reneau, Mackenzie Mgbako, Trey Galloway, and others…replaced Liam McNeeley with 2024 five-star wing Bryson Tucker… and have arguably the number one transfer portal class with Myles Rice, Kaanan Carlyle, Oumar Ballo, and Luke Goode coming in so far with two more scholarships remaining.

The Hoosiers upgraded their backcourt to become more dynamic with Rice and Carlyle while finding the best replacement for Kel’el Ware, who is going to NBA, with former Arizona big man Oumar Ballo.

Perhaps more importantly however, Mike Woodson found himself his shooter in Luke Goode, who comes from the Illinois program but has great ties to the university and is a Indiana native.

“I think the Luke Goode addition is really, really important as a shooter, Dauster continued.”

“It’s not just Luke Goode, I’m very high on Myles Rice. I love the combination of Myles Rice and Trey Galloway in the backcourt. I think that Kaanan Carlyle is the kind of guy that you can bring in to be a scorer maybe off the bench, maybe as a starter. There’s enough guys around him that you can kind of just let him go get a bucket and not worry about anything else. I think that is where he is at his best.”

More: Quick thoughts and reactions on conference matchups for Indiana basketball

Obviously, when you accumulate this much talent, it is always about how well you put the pieces together to make everything balance out. Last year, Indiana had one of the more talented teams in the country, but the pieces did not fit to make it a well-oiled machine. Mike Woodson caught a lot of flack for that while also being too reliant on the huge frontcourt of Reneau, Ware, and Mgbako playing together.

Now that Hoosier Nation knows who is coming to the program next year, the concern as of now is whether Mike Woodson will be able to fit all these moving parts together and be able to adapt to a more modern style of play versus just strictly feeding the post and letting them try to carry most of the offense on their back.

“My single, biggest concern with Indiana is going to be whether or not Mike Woodson falls in love with the idea of having to play Oumar Ballo and Malik Reneau together,” said Dauster. “If you can find a way, if you can find it in your heart Woody, if you can find a way to be able have those guys maybe alternate, maybe play them both 23 minutes a game and you got three minutes where both of them are on the floor at the same time, let them swap out at the five spot and be able to get (Mackenzie) Mgbako at the four, be able to take advantage of the fact that someone like Bryson Tucker might be a mismatch guy.”

“Be able to lean into this idea that hey you know what, you got some pretty good guards and some pretty wings on this roster and then combine all that and put it together and go out there and play Big Ten basketball, I think they got a chance to be really, really good.”

“Let be honest though, the number one concern we have with Indiana is what? Not their talent. Not their roster,” Jeff Goodman also added on this episode. “It’s Mike Woodson as a coach and is he gonna adapt…is he going to get away from playing Ballo, Reneau, and Mgbako at the three, four, and five. That’s going to be the big question.”

“He’s got a lot of versatility with this roster. Does he utilize it?”

Whether Mike Woodson changes his style up just a little bit to give hos offense more flexibility is still the question and will remain the question until the first time you see the 2024-25 Indiana basketball Hoosiers on the floor.

Regardless, the expectations by fans and media are almost as higher than it was going into the last season of Trayce Jackson-Davis era. Fans are tired of being mediocre and want Indiana to be back at the top of the college basketball as badly as ever.

Still though, a top ten team after what we all saw last season? It is hard to imagine but man, you cannot overlook this amount of talent on this year’s roster.

“There are still a lot of moving parts when it comes to some of the better players especially in the portal right? You can’t convince me right now that on paper that 10 teams have more talent than this Indiana team does right now. I just think they are going to be really, really good.”

You can watch the full clip of The Field of 68 episode below.

SEE ALSO: Mackenzie Mgbako flashed potential in year one. Coming back as a sophomore, it’s about elevating his game — What he needs to do to ‘put it together’

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