Who Compares? Top Three Ex-Indiana Players Who Produced Like Trey Galloway

Hoosiers On SI examines past Hoosiers whose stats or style were similar to current players.

Todd Golden | Aug 15, 2024

Feb 6, 2024; Columbus, Ohio, USA; Indiana Hoosiers guard Trey Galloway (32) reacts after drawing a foul during the second half of the men s basketball game against the Ohio State Buckeyes at Value City Arena. Ohio State lost 76-73. / Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK

In this story:

Indiana Hoosiers

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – There might not be a more fascinating player than senior guard Trey Galloway when it comes to comparing current Indiana players to former ones.

It would be a challenge to come up with a stranger season than Galloway had in 2024, both in terms of his season and the rest of his Indiana career.

At the heart of the bizarre season was Galloway’s role. He truly had a jack of all trades and master of none kind of season.

He did all things from a perimeter standpoint, but he was never truly given a defining role by the coaching staff. There were reasons for this – injuries, his own and others, and suspensions, too – but as Galloway adjusted to new duties from one week to the next, it created a very wide variance in performance.

Sometimes he ran the offense. Sometimes he played off point guard Xavier Johnson. Sometimes he camped on the 3-point line. Sometimes he drove the lane.

Without a distinct role, the hard-working Galloway never got his footing, statistically, in any one category. He excelled in some ways and struggled in others.

Take his 3-point shooting. Galloway struggled mightily from beyond the arc with a 26% conversion rate. This came one season after Galloway converted 46.2% from 3-point range. Very few players see a 20 percentage point drop in a single year.

Yet Galloway still converted 46.6% from the field overall, a tribute to his ability to get to the rim.

All of this variance in data creates an extremely large and diverse group of “comps.” By the criteria used for this series, Galloway produced 26 “comps,” by far the most for any player. Two different Xavier Johnson senior seasons make his list.

As comparisons go, Galloway is every player and unique. The data is all over the place.

One example of this paradox is Pat Graham ’94, who is within the scoring average range to qualify as a “comp” for Galloway. Graham’s scoring average was 11.8 during his senior season, just over a point more than Galloway’s 10.6 clip. It’s in 3-point shooting where it gets weird.

Graham shot a very good 45.9% from 3-point range in 1994, well above Galloway’s 26% average in 2024. However, if you take peak Galloway from 2023? Graham shot just a touch worse than Galloway from beyond the arc. These anomalies exist across the width and breadth of Galloway’s “comps.”

We’ll do our best to try to fine-tune the data and find some players who were comparable with Galloway’s strange 2024 campaign … even if there truly is no perfect match.

Tale of the tape

Galloway’s traditional statistics: 10.6 points, 2.9 rebounds, 4.6 assists. He converted 46.6% of his shots, but made only 26% from 3-point range. He is listed at 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds.

Galloway’s advanced statistics, as used by sports-reference.com: Reneau had 1.7 win shares and a 13.3 Player Efficiency Rating. He had an 18.9% usage percentage, a 25.6 % assist percentage, a 4.9% total rebounding percentage and a 0.9 defensive box plus-minute rating.

Some of the advanced statistics are explained below.

Honorable mention

Purely from a scoring-rebounding-assist-shooting percentage point of view, Bob Wilkinson ’60 averaged 11 points, 2.8 rebounds and converted 42.6% of his shots for Branch McCracken’s Hoosiers. Wilkinson was 6-foot-1, but then players from that era generally give up some inches to their future peers.

Butch Carter ’80 lines up closely, statistically and in body type. The future Indiana Pacer averaged 11.1 points and 3.5 rebounds for the Big Ten champions. Carter was also 6-foot-5 and listed at 200 pounds at Indiana, a tale of the tape similar to Galloway.

Where the comparison comes apart is in roles. Carter was a guard, but with small forward tendencies, not really a match with Galloway’s skill set. Carter led the Big Ten in field goal percentage at 54.7% in 1980, worse than Galloway’s 58% two-point percentage from last season, but it’s still a bridge too far to compare the pair.

A.J. Moye ’04 is another who lines up statistically in some ways, but not in others. Moye averaged 10 points and shot almost identical to Galloway at 46.7%, but Moye crashed the glass at a significantly better rate (6.4 rpg) while Galloway was a much better distributor (4.6 assists for Galloway vs. 1.9 for Moye).

Since he made the list twice, you have to include Xavier Johnson ’22 and ’23. The traditional stats are tight, but the advanced stats in both seasons create some separation in Johnson’s favor. Of course, the fact that they played in the same backcourt for Mike Woodson in both seasons also helps sharpen their similarities into focus.

3. Michael Lewis ‘00

Indiana's Michael Lewis looks for an outlet to pass to against tight defense by Kentucky's Saul Smith during second half action at the RCA Dome December, 1999. Michael Lewis / Robert Scheer/IndyStar via Imagn Content Services, LLC

Lewis, currently Ball State’s head coach, was Bob Knight’s last point guard. His traditional statistics are very similar to Galloway. The Jasper, Ind., native averaged 10.3 points, 5.3 assists and 3.9 rebounds, all within a percentage point of Galloway’s 2024 averages. Lewis converted 51.9% of his shots, a bit better than Galloway because Lewis was a 45.9% 3-point shooter.

Then again? If you stretch the “comp” to Galloway’s peak 3-point shooting season in 2023? Galloway (46.2% in 2023) is right there with Lewis in outside shooting. The question for 2025 is which version of Galloway shooting will we get?

Lewis’s career ended at the dawn of advanced stats. Befitting his field general role in 2000, Lewis out-paces Galloway with 3.9 win shares, as he marshaled both A.J. Guyton and Kirk Haston to productive seasons. Lewis isn’t quite the same body type either at 6-foot-1, but the point guard side of Galloway’s game makes this a reasonable “comp.”

2. Verdell Jones III ‘12

Dec 28, 2011; East Lansing, MI, USA; Indiana Hoosiers guard Verdell Jones III (12) passes the ball around Michigan State Spartans guard Travis Trice (left) during the first half at the Breslin Center. Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports / Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports

Jones is kind of the opposite of Lewis. His traditional stats don’t make him comparable to Galloway at 7.5 points and 41.9% shooting, but the advanced stats reveal similarities.

The pair are almost identical in win shares with Jones at 1.6 and Galloway at 1.7. That same similarity occurs in their Player Efficiency Ratio with Galloway at 13.3 and Jones at 13.2.

Their usage rate was also close, with Jones at 20.3% and Galloway at 18.9%. They assisted at nearly the same rate too – Galloway at 25.6%, Jones at 23%.

In a scenario the opposite of Lewis, but befitting Galloway’s dual nature in role, Jones played off of Indiana point guard Jordan Hulls and ball-handler Victor Oladipo in 2012 until he tore his ACL in the Big Ten Tournament. Finally, Jones is probably closest among the top three in body type at 6-foot-5 and 195 pounds.

1. Devonte Green ‘20

Mar 7, 2020; Bloomington, Indiana, USA;Indiana Hoosiers guard Devonte Green (11) shoots the ball while Wisconsin Badgers forward Nate Reuvers (35) defends in the first half at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. Mandatory Credit: Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports / Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports

Not a perfect match by any means, but Green is where the traditional stats and the advanced stats come together.

Green, a North Babylon, N.Y., native, averaged 10.8 points and 2.7 assists in 2020, both nearly identical to Galloway’s production. Galloway was a better rebounder than Green, but Galloway is also an inch taller and 25 pounds heavier.

Green and Galloway’s advanced stats really mirror one another. Win shares? Green 1.8, Galloway 1.7. While Galloway was a better rebounder in average per game, Green was better in percentage of boards available at 6.9% to 4.9%, but they’re close regardless. Assist percentage is within each other’s range with Galloway at 25.6% and Green at 20.5%.

One difference between Green and Galloway is that Green primarily came off the bench for Archie Miller’s Hoosiers with just seven starts in 29 games. That leads to a higher usage rate for Green at 28.5%, but apart from that, and a bit of a size difference, they are similar.

Not an easy task to find similarity when Galloway’s game and statistical record has so many different wrinkles to it.

Next: Mackenzie Mgbako.

Rules

Players will only be compared to those who played roughly the same position. There’s little point in comparing Malik Reneau to Yogi Ferrell, for example.

There’s some leeway granted to shooting guards, whether they also handled the ball or whether they were big and could play small forward. Same for power forwards, some of whom are stretch forwards, others man the post.

The next rule is important: players are only compared to those who were in the same class. Seniors-to-seniors, juniors-to-juniors, etc.

With redshirt seasons - and particularly as it relates to current players, COVID-19 amnesty seasons - some current seniors are compared to seniors who exhausted their eligibility during their careers.

While most pre-2020 players had one true senior season, Xavier Johnson had three senior seasons thanks to his injury waiver granted for the 2023-24 season – a true man of the times.

Only players who played 25 minutes per game are eligible. Once you get below that threshold, the comps get very skewed.

Sports-reference.com was used because its data set goes back further (to 1948 for traditional statistics) than advanced statistical sites like kenpom.com or barttorvik.com. This allows for the widest possible historical comparison.

Criteria

Current Indiana players were compared to players of the past in three different categories – traditional statistics, advanced statistics and role.

One fundamental issue is that advanced statistics are only available starting in the mid-1990s – and that’s only the most basic ones. The full menu of advanced statistics we have today were only tracked starting in the 2009-10 season.

Traditional counting stats and advanced stats create differences in comps. Traditional stats are subject to minutes played.

Players were considered a “comp” if they were within two points per game in scoring or within one win share in advanced statistics.

After that, the other statistics were used to form a close comparison. A good comp also needs to be roughly the same size, though that is difficult as players have steadily grown over time. Bill Garrett was a 6-foot-3 post player in the early 1950s, for example.

Advanced ratings explained

Win shares: An estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player via their offense and defense. The higher the number, the better.

Player Efficiency Rating: A rating created by John Hollinger in an attempt to quantify a player’s overall contribution. An average rating is 15.

Usage Percentage: An estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player when they’re on the floor.

Assist percentage: An estimate of the percentage of teammate field goals a player assisted on where they were on the floor.

Total rebounding percentage: An estimate of the available rebounds a player grabbed when they were on the floor.

Defensive box plus-minus: A box score estimate of the defensive points per 100 possessions a player contributed to above a league-average player. The higher the number, the better.