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    • 2024-25 Indiana Basketball Season Preview: Best-Worst Case Scenario
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    2024-25 Indiana Basketball Season Preview: Best-Worst Case Scenario

    Kathleen William Posted on

    BLOOMINGTON – It's fair to say that Mike Woodson starts the upcoming season on as warm a pitch as any coach in this newly expanded, coast-to-coast Big Ten.

    It's more than fair to say that Woodson also brings what on paper looks like his best, deepest and most talented team to this growing conference party, a group picked in a poll of league writers and second only this winter Purdue placed second. That's another way of saying that the Big Ten media believes the Hoosiers are a serious contender for the conference title.

    It raises an intriguing question: What is the best-case scenario for these Hoosiers? And to add to that: what's the worst? Let's think about this for a moment.

    Get to know the IU basketball roster: Hoosiers ahead of 2024-25 season in detail

    More IU basketball: Season forecast, schedule analysis

    Best case scenario: Silverware and a long term in March

    That’s how talented this Indiana team is.

    It's up to Woodson to put all of these pieces together, and it's not easy. He has to balance two big balls in Malik Reneau and Oumar Ballo alongside the smaller, faster lineups he obviously recruited for when he retained Mackenzie Mgbako and then signed Bryson Tucker and Luke Goode.

    Woodson needs to quickly sort out his rotation from a plethora of options. He needs a healthy Trey Galloway. He needs to see shooting improvement from some of his guards and wings. And he needs some luck, like any coach would.

    But the tools are there. Myles Rice could be considered the best point guard in the Big Ten. Reneau and Ballo are almost certainly the most dangerous frontcourt in the league. Goode and Mgbako provide shooting depth. It's not even remotely expected that Kanaan Carlyle will become one of the best goalies in the league. And Indiana is at least nine, if not 10, players deep in the Big Ten influential rankings.

    In terms of results, a best-case scenario looks like this: Win Battle 4 Atlantis, win the Big Ten regular-season title (or part of it), and advance to second with a protected NCAA tournament spot Weekend where everything is possible is possible.

    None of this is a guarantee in any way. But none of it is fantasy. It's not an impossible question at all. At least in theory, this team is capable of reaching that level this winter.

    Worst-case scenario: Injuries and shooting return and IU has a decision to make

    The floor under this team is almost certainly higher than the floor under the last one – depth, experience and balance all serve as evidence. But the Big Ten doesn't offer many guarantees.

    A solution to Indiana's long-standing 3-point shooting problems requires having multiple players shoot above their career averages in college. This doesn't just happen automatically. Injuries also need to be addressed in the backcourt.

    Success will require Woodson to put these pieces together effectively and for him to find the right balance between the two big lineups that benefit from his Reneau-Ballo combination and the smaller, more versatile lineups he played for last spring clearly recruited. Woodson has yet to run effective rotations at IU that look like what he describes.

    The non-conference schedule offers little opportunity to improve the Hoosiers' NCAA Tournament resume, and while the talent is there to compete at the top of the conference, the schedule itself does little favors. A run of seven away games in 11 (and six in nine) in January and part of February will test this team's strength and determination.

    Indiana's best-case scenario has the Hoosiers competing at or near the top of the conference, finishing among the more dangerous teams in the NCAA Tournament field and perhaps even making an upset in March.

    Worst case scenario, this team's overall talent is never properly utilized. Woodson fails to find the right balance with his rotations, and the revamped offense he envisions never materializes.

    November and December are wasted, January and February are a grind, and IU is just struggling to clear the right side of the bubble in March. With only two years left on his contract, Woodson and his boss Scott Dolson will be forced to have some honest, difficult conversations this spring about the direction of Indiana's men's basketball program.

    The gap between success and failure for Indiana this winter is significant.

    Listen to Mind Your Banners, our IU athletics podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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    Kathleen William
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