IU's long-armed CJ Gunn, the shooter from Lawrence North, has stolen his way onto court
He was a shooter. That’s what everybody said when CJ Gunn of Lawrence North committed to the IU basketball team a few years back. Finally, the rest of us were saying, the Hoosiers got themselves a home-grown shooter. And maybe they did. Maybe not.
Maybe that’s not the point today.
Today let’s talk about the evolution of CJ Gunn, the college guard, who came to IU because he can shoot but struggled as a freshman — 2-for-24 from 3-point range (8.3%) — and lost his way and was struggling as a shooter again this season (0-for-4 from distance on the season through seven games) and lost his way. But then he found something. He found his way on the court, is what he found, and it has nothing to do with shooting.
Turns out, CJ Gunn can play a little defense.
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These are things we saw Tuesday night in IU’s 78-75 victory against Michigan at Crisler Arena, where the crowd was tiny but might come back if the basketball team starts cheating and winning games again, kind of like the UM foot—
Anyway.
We saw CJ Gunn play a pivotal role in IU’s second victory in Big Ten play to open the 2023-24 league slate, and we saw him play it on the defensive end. He had four steals, adding to his team-high total of 13 — nearly twice the next guy, Kel’el Ware, with seven steals — despite being eighth on the team in minutes (12.3 per game, entering Tuesday).
Gunn’s minutes are on the rise, because he’s found something on the defensive end. But you know something? Maybe he’s not done evolving. Because in this same game against Michigan, when CJ Gunn played a career-high 20 minutes, he might have found something on offense. Found something he’d lost along the way, that is.
Because it’s like I told you earlier, like everyone had told us when he signed with IU out of Lawrence North.
CJ Gunn’s a shooter.
Prep insider from 2021: Lawrence North junior C.J. Gunn picks Hoosiers
IU basketball misses Xavier Johnson
Before we get to Gunn, can we say a few words about this bizarre IU basketball team? Here’s the most bizarre sentence you’ll read in this story, a sentence that sums up the bizarre state of the 2023-24 Hoosiers:
They miss the stability of Xavier Johnson.
Yeah, I said it. You’ve been watching this team, right? You’ve seen how it has looked on offense the past two games without Johnson? Granted, the Hoosiers won both, and both were against Big Ten opposition, but Michigan is not terribly good and Maryland is, for lack of a better word, terrible.
The Hoosiers defeated Maryland on Friday night, a 65-53 victory where I could barely conceal my meh, because Maryland is ranked 257th in the RPI. That’s two spots behind Maryland-Eastern Shore, at No. 255. Maryland-Eastern Shore, wherever that is — somewhere on the eastern shore of Maryland, is my guess — is 2-5. And ranked ahead of Maryland in the RPI! So the Terps stink. The Wolverines are better, but they’re going to need coach Juwan Howard back from September heart surgery, and maybe some scouting help from Connor Stalions just to reach the NIT.
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Where were we? This story is all over the place, like one of those drives by sixth-year senior point guard Xavier Johnson … oh, right: Xavier Johnson. He has two speeds, too fast and way too fast, but he makes the IU offense go. Sometimes it goes off a cliff, but at least it goes somewhere. Without him, the Hoosiers struggle to create. The closest thing they have to a reliable second playmaker is 6-9 Malik Reneau. And he’s a power forward. A skilled power forward, but still.
This team needs more guards. It needs Xavier Johnson back, but he watched the game Tuesday in a walking boot. No idea how bad the injury is. Mum’s the word in Bloomington.
Weird’s another word. Like, it’s not simply that IU can’t shoot 3-pointers. More to the point, IU won’t shoot 3-pointers. In an era where teams routinely shoot 30 or 40 shots from distance, the Hoosiers have tried no more than 16 in any of their first eight games. That was against Wright State, and they made just three. Probably explains why they don’t shoot many. IU attempted just nine 3-pointers against Michigan, going 3-for-9 — same as it did against Maryland — and that’s weird.
One issue is senior guard Trey Galloway, whose emergence last season as a shooter was a beautiful surprise. He was a reluctant, ineffective shooter from distance his first two seasons — 6-for-33 as a freshman (18.2%), 6-for-28 as a sophomore (21.4%) — but last season was 30-for-65 (46.2%).
This season? He’s back to his old ways — 3-for-22 (13.6) — and has missed his last 12 in a row. That includes three Tuesday night, the last one an air ball. Galloway also was 3-for-6 from the foul line, as his free throw accuracy continues to drop from his freshman season (73.7%) to sophomore (65%) to junior (64.4%) to this currently (56%).
Galloway’s not the worst foul shooter on the team, though. That would be transfer Payton Sparks, who shot 70.3% from the line as a freshman at Ball State and 52.5% as a sophomore, but here in his junior season at IU needed to go 2-for-3 Tuesday night to improve his season FT accuracy to 29.4% (5-for-17).
(Really.)
It’s a strange team, I’m telling you. But the Hoosiers are 7-1 overall and 2-0 in the Big Ten, and as the CJ Gunn experience shows, players can evolve. Yes, in the middle of a season.
CJ Gunn is a defensive menace
Gunn is a gambler on defense. He stands 6-6, for one thing, with long arms out to here, and he roams the court like a free safety. It doesn’t always work — sometimes a gamble doesn’t pay off, and that makes IU coach Mike Woodson a grouch — but lately Gunn has been making safer bets on the defensive end.
Tuesday night, for example, after a missed shot by IU, Gunn was running back for defense when he saw Michigan’s Jaelin Llewellyn dribbling ahead of him. Gunn reached one of those long arms up the court and poked the ball away. Later in the first half, after Gunn missed a driving layup, Michigan’s Tray Jackson grabbed the defensive rebound and headed up the court without looking behind him. There was Gunn, reaching one of those long arms, taking the ball away and feeding Kaleb Banks for a dunk.
In the second half came the most ridiculous of his four steals, when he was running back for defense — seeing a trend here? — and 6-8 Michigan forward Will Tschetter tried to throw a routine outlet pass over Gunn’s head to guard Nimari Burnett. There’s nothing routine about the length of Gunn’s arms, and he reached up to bat the ball, grab it and get fouled. Two free throws later, IU led 66-64 with 5:28 left.
Defense is where Gunn has made his mark this season, and as IU was trying to hang on in the final minutes it was Gunn, not McDonald’s All American and starting wing Mackenzie Mgbako, joining the rest of the IU starting five on the floor. By then, though, Gunn also had shown an ability to hit a shot.
Gunn came into this game still seeking his first 3-pointer of the season, remember — just four attempts through seven games — but he made two in a row Tuesday, one in each half, to go with those two free throws. That gave him a season-high eight points to go with his season-high 20 minutes and season-high four steals.
After a slow start, CJ Gunn is coming along nicely. Maybe we’ll be saying the same about Galloway and Sparks, maybe even about the rest of this IU offense, before long.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Ex-Lawrence North shooter CJ Gunn is IU basketball's defensive terror
