Indiana men’s basketball: Where have all the centers gone?

Indiana men’s basketball has not signed a center out of high school since Logan Duncomb committed to play for Archie Miller on April 7th, 2020. He appeared in 18 total games for Indiana over the course of two seasons, before transferring to Xavier, then Winthrop and finally Notre Dame.

In that time, Indiana has had five different centers start. Trayce Jackson-Davis rewrote Indiana history ahead of Duncomb on the depth chart, and Mike Woodson’s two replacements for him – Kel’el Ware and Oumar Ballo – both came from the portal. Last year, Darian DeVries started both Sam Alexis and Reed Bailey, never quite finding the presence inside Indiana has needed.

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Of course, the lack of coaching continuity is a factor here. While Woodson earned a reputation for working with bigs, it wasn’t clear that the centers from the high school ranks were all that interested in his Indiana. He seemed to have a preference for more experienced players, even if they hadn’t reached their potential at their prior stops.

The changes at head coach have meant different offensive styles as well as recruiting philosophies.

Woodson relied on his bigs to the point that it wouldn’t have made sense to play a freshman inside. In each of his four years, a center or power forward had the highest usage rate in his offense and led the team in scoring. He did this with rangey bigs (Ware), Big bigs (Ballo), and bouncy bigs (Jackson-Davis).

In part due to how the roster shook out, this was not how DeVries ran his offense. Last year’s team looked more modern in its pacing and 3-point volume, but didn’t feature its forwards in a way that would attract high school prospects.

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With Aiden Sherrell and Samet Yigitoglu in the fold, DeVries has the chance to put some quality big man basketball on tape as proof of concept. Besides making the tournament, this is arguably the most important thing he can accomplish in year two.

Each of the five Big Ten teams that made the Elite Eight last year…

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Publish date : 2026-06-24 13:00:00

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