As Indiana’s 2025 recruiting focus narrows, portal will become important again next spring – Inside the Hall

Malachi Moreno, an IU recruiting target in the class of 2025, was announced Wednesday to announce his decision on Friday.

Moreno, a 6-foot-11 center from Georgetown, Indiana, has made multiple trips to Bloomington and the Hoosiers’ coaching staff has built a strong relationship with him. He is considered one of the top 30 players in the country.

Despite the strong relationship Indiana worked to build, Moreno’s recruitment changed in the spring. John Calipari left Kentucky after 15 seasons for Arkansas and Mark Pope arrived in Lexington. Pope quickly identified Moreno as a player the Wildcats wanted in the class of 2025 and is now the favorite to land his commitment on Friday.

That shouldn’t be surprising, given that Moreno’s high school, Great Crossing, is less than 20 miles from Rupp Arena.

Indiana still has plenty of great options on its recruiting board for the rising senior class (Braylon Mullins, Jalen Haralson, Trent Sisley, Mikel Brown Jr. and Eric Reibe, to name a few), but the reality is the portal will be critical again for the Hoosiers next spring.

After landing one high school recruit in the 2024 cycle (Bryson Tucker), the Hoosiers added six players to the transfer portal in the offseason. Only two of them, Kanaan Carlyle and Myles Rice, have multiple seasons of eligibility remaining.

A look at Indiana’s basketball scholarship chart shows Indiana will have at least six open spots on the 2025-26 roster, assuming there are no underclassmen losses, which is unlikely.

“That’s the new norm now,” Mike Woodson said in late May at Huber’s Winery. “I mean, this isn’t like the Bob Knight days, where you could build your team in three or four years and trust the process. You know, our process now changes every year because you don’t know who’s coming and who’s going.”

According to our roster tracking for the 2024-25 season, 138 new scholarship players will enter the Big Ten next season. Of those 138, just over 63 percent came through the transfer portal. That means 87 newcomers came through the portal or an average of 4.8 per team versus 51 rookies, an average of 2.8 per team.

On average, Big Ten teams will add more than seven new players to their rosters for the 2024-25 season. Indiana has seven new players. It’s the new way of doing business in college basketball.

That’s not to say the 2025 recruiting class isn’t important to the Hoosiers. It is. Indiana would be wise to consider several candidates in the class, particularly in-state options.

Greenfield-Central’s Braylon Mullins is one of, if not the, best shooters in the country. Jalen Haralson is a fantastic player who can make an instant impact. Trent Sisley is a Southern Indiana native who is talented, versatile and a player who can help a program win for multiple seasons.

The addition of any of those three (Brown Jr. or Reibe) would boost Indiana’s roster build for the 2025-26 season. Several of them appear capable of playing right away.

But even if IU does have a big breakout and lands several high school players in the cycle, this reality doesn’t change: the portal will once again be critical to building a contender. Every program will experience attrition, and every portal will need experienced players to replace the ones they lose.

“It is what it is. You just don’t know. I’d love to put together a team with high school kids, that’ll stay with me for four years, man, but those days are gone, man,” Woodson explained. “You’re going to get a player that’s unhappy and says ‘hey, I want more minutes. ’ I’m trying to put together a team where you can’t worry about minutes. It’s got to be a team thing.”

“And you have to commit to the team because then everything else takes care of itself, man. And that’s what happens to any college basketball coach. That’s what you have to deal with, man, because everybody wants to play, everybody wants to go to the NBA, well, shit, that’s not realistic. You can’t make everybody play 40 minutes. Not everybody’s going to play in the NBA. And that’s what a guy who spent 34 years of his life there is saying. It is what it is.”

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