My Two Cents: Fresh-Face Flashbacks on Ride To Bloomington For Another Basketball Season

We pop the cork on another Indiana basketball season on Wednesday with Media Day in Bloomington. There are a lot of new players to meet after the complete roster makeover, so let's get the party started.

Indiana forwards Malik Reneau (left) and Mackenzie Mgbako talk during a game against Kansas on Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023. / Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Another Indiana basketball season basically starts on Wednesday. The Hoosiers are hosting Media Day for both the men's and women's teams, and so our wonderful five-month journey begins.

Driving to Bloomington on Tuesday, I couldn't help but think back to my very first trip to Bloomington in 1976. My parents dropped me off at Briscoe Quad — I was 10th floor in the south building — prior to my first day of my freshman year, and I didn't know a soul in that building.

Not a one.

That memory from 48 years ago — how can it really be that long? — seemed fresh in my mind on the ride south. Why? Because we've got a new basketball season upon us, and I barely recognize this Hoosiers roster.

There are 13 scholarship players on Indiana's 2024-25 roster, and I've never met more than half of them — seven to be exact. Now, to be fair, I have seen two of them live, Arizona transfer Oumar Ballo and Illinois transfer Luke Goode, Jack Ankony of my Indiana Hoosiers on SI team wrote about him extensively after he scored 11 points in Illinois' win over the Hoosiers last year. Ballo had 15 points and 12 rebounds in Arizona's 89-75 beatdown of IU in Las Vegas two years ago.

The others are all new to me, and I'm looking forward to chatting with them. We've got standout freshman Bryson Tucker, a late recruit that was a huge April addition, and transfers Myles Rice (Washington State), Kanaan Carlyle (Stanford), Langdon Hatton (Bellarmine) and Dallas James (South Carolina State).

That's the nature of college basketball these days. It's not the game we all grew up with. Sure, people transferred back in the day too, but usually just over playing time, or wanting to be closer to home or not being able to handle a demanding coach. We know one of those guys. Lots of guys transferred out of Indiana's basketball program during my time, but I also spent four years with Mike Woodson and Butch Carter and Glen Grunwald. It was a different time.

Now, NIL and the transfer portal has completely changed the entire basketball landscape. It's hard to build a program full of four-year players. The really good ones turn pro early, and the pretty good ones hit the portal and look for the highest NIL bidder. Even the players who aren't that good still try to find the best fit after every season, and if there's a few extra dollars available, they're gone, too.

We don't have to like it, of course, but it is the way it is. And thankfully, Indiana has embraced it. The Hoosiers weren't very good last year, finishing 19-14 and missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time in Mike Woodson's three years.

Several Indiana players graduated, turned pro or transferred, and Woodson's roster needed to be completely rebuilt. For a while there, as the season was wrapping up through a hard-to-swallow February and March, it looked very possible that Indiana wouldn't have ANY returning players.

But then Trey Galloway and Anthony Leal, two home-grown Hoosiers, said on Senior Day that they'd be back for a fifth year, and both got rousing standing ovations. Malik Reneau, Mackenzie Mgbako Gabe Cupps and Jakai Newton all dismissed portal rumors and decided to come back, too. You have to recruit your own roster every year too, and the Hoosiers did a good job of that.

But there were seven other spots to fill. Tucker was the first piece, a rare 5-star player who was suddenly available in April. Indiana got him, which was massive.

Woodson and his staff then went to work in the transfer portal — and, boy, did they work. Backed by NIL collectives that were suddenly flush with millions of donor dollars, Indiana became a popular destination. Ballo, Rice and Carlyle were all heavily decorated players in the Pac-12, and the idea of playing at Indiana was enticing — along with those great NIL deals. They're all Hoosiers now.

Goode, an Indiana native, was a big get too, becasuse he's a killer three-point shooter, something Indiana has lacked for years. Hatton and James don't have the same resumes of these other four transfers, but they fill needs. This is a full and complete roster now.

There's no question in my mind that — with all due respect to my dude Trayce Jackson-Davis — that this is the best of Woodson's four teams. For the first time, really, he has a lot of guards and wing players who can make threes, can push the ball up the floor and can get after teams defensively.

This team should look a lot different simply because the backcourt is so much better. I'll defnitely be asking some questions tomorrow about how the style of play might change. And there will be many more questions about the new guys.

I think it's all great.

I wrote a month ago that this is my last season covering Indiana basketball on a daily basis. I'll be 66 in November, and it's time to slow down — just a little bit. I wrote my first article more than 50 years ago, and that's a damn long time and a hell of a lot of words.

I'm fired up about doing one more dance around the Big Ten, in Bloomington, West Lafayette and all my other favorite spots on the road. This last six-year run with Indiana basketball has been a blast, and I can't wait for another new season to start in 51 days.

It all starts on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to say hello and meeting new people — a lot of them. I'm also interested in seeing how good they can be. Many national outlets are picking the Hoosiers to win the Big Ten, something that hasn't happened in nine years.

It's going to be entertaining, so bring it on.