Indiana basketball transfer portal priorities: What Mike Woodson needs to add to IU roster

MINNEAPOLIS – Now, Indiana gets to work on next season.

The program will pass on the NIT, the Hoosiers instead opting to conclude their season quietly and turn their full attentions to the crucial transfer portal window that opened Monday. With one scholarship already open, two players out of eligibility, a third potentially draft-bound and two players entering the portal Tuesday (Kaleb Banks and Payton Sparks), there is plenty of work to do. Some thoughts on what Mike Woodson will need to address in the coming weeks:

'We’re gonna get after it this summer.' How Trey Galloway plans to get IU back to March Madness

Insider: Woodson must bring modern basketball to IU, or Hoosiers will be old news.

Kel’el Ware’s potential replacement

Ware wasn’t in the mood to consider his future publicly Friday night, and that’s understandable. If we assume for the sake of this exercise the 7-0 sophomore eventually declares for the NBA draft, he will take some serious replacing.

They are different kinds of players, but Ware and Trayce Jackson-Davis together make it awfully clear Woodson places great value on a five who can rebound at high volume, protect the rim as a legitimate shot-blocking presence and settle comfortably into Woodson’s ball-screen offense. By the business end of this season, Ware was one of the Big Ten’s best defensive bigs, and his February/March dominant streak was a crucial element of the Hoosiers’ late five-game win streak.

The good news for Woodson? His sales pitch shouldn’t be complicated. Look what he did for Jackson-Davis, and the way one year with him restored Ware’s reputation as a professional-level, multi-faceted big. Coupled to IU’s considerable NIL resources, if Ware does leave, there should be no shortage of candidates to replace him.

3-point shooting

It’s long past time Indiana dealt with its failings from behind the 3-point line.

Shooting is always a coveted skill in the portal, so the Hoosiers won’t simply have their pick of shooters. But even if Woodson wants to persist with his self-described “inside out” style, it will never work at the level IU needs it do — with volume or efficiency — if what’s out cannot adequately stretch defenses to accommodate what’s inside.

The manner of Friday’s season-ending loss to Nebraska offered a timely final reminder. The Cornhuskers’ hyperactive trapping defense took Indiana’s bigs away, Nebraska delivered broadsides from behind the arc at the other end and the Hoosiers simply couldn’t hang. Indiana needs to close this portal window with shooters, plural, bound for Bloomington.

Scoring guards

These two can go hand in hand.

Indiana needs offensive punch from behind the arc. It can come in the form of volume 3-point shooting, but it doesn’t necessarily have to.

Consider Auburn as an example. The Tigers are a good 3-point shooting team. Not great, but solid. What they have, though, is a solid stable of guards that can score with volume if they find their range on a given night. Five of Auburn’s top seven scorers are guards, and the Tigers have five players who shoot at least 35.1% from 3 (on at least 40 attempts). They have seven players with at least 25 made 3s this season, but none with more than 52, the load spread among a group whose strength is its depth.

IU has some of the necessary tools here — Trey Galloway if his averages can improve, Mackenzie Mgbako if he returns, perhaps a younger guard developing, like Jakai Newton.

We always need to presume there will be portal departures that change the calculus with any of this. But if Indiana could go into the mid-major ranks for 2-3 guards with a proven track record of being able to carry some scoring load, it would change the complexion of this team immediately. The Hoosiers don’t necessarily need to grab player-of-the-year types. Finding transfers who could, for example, add to Indiana what Lance Jones has Purdue this season would be a major win.

Point guard help

This is a trickier ask.

Indiana tried adding similar last year, only to find most serious point-minded portal guards were skeptical of their potential playing time with Xavier Johnson and Trey Galloway coming back. Now, Johnson is gone, but Galloway returns following a season in which his profile as a floor leader grew tremendously. And Gabe Cupps, who had his freshman moments but carried a heavier-than-anticipated load for IU this winter, projects to return alongside him as well.

In the same way shooting and scoring aims can dovetail, Indiana can, in theory, add helpful ball-handling relief from players whose primary remit is elsewhere. Again, looking to mid- and low-major ranks might be helpful here. Volume scoring guards at those levels tend to be primary ball handlers as well, simply by virtue of their all-around importance offensively.

Given the Hoosiers don’t need a full-blown starting point guard, but simply some help shouldering the back end of the ball-handling load, this could be a two-birds-one-stone situation.

Malik Reneau’s development

This isn’t a portal need, but it is a requirement of this offseason around which Indiana’s intentions in the portal must be shaped.

Presuming Ware is gone and Reneau returns, that means rebuilding a frontcourt around the less positionally defined of its two bigs this season. Reneau has outstanding footwork and finishing ability. He’s added face-up offense to his game, and that will probably keep developing. No starter drew more fouls per 40 minutes this winter.

Reneau also does not possess either the size or length to play the five the way Woodson seemingly wants it played. His rebounding numbers have always been solid without suggesting he possesses outstanding instincts in that area. And his foul troubles have often reflected a player stuck between the athleticism needed to guard stretch fours, and the size necessary to handle true fives.

Transfers could always change this conversation (that’s true of virtually any player on any roster in this era). But assuming Reneau does return, Indiana must figure out how to draw out his best while remodeling its roster to accommodate him at the four, but not at the expense of a more modern, free-flowing and efficient brand of basketball.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Where Indiana basketball needs to add to IU roster in transfer portal