CAROLINA, Puerto Rico – Trent Sisley occupies a curious place on Indiana’s new-look roster.
He is the Hoosiers’ only full-on freshman, with the team since the earliest possible date. He’s the only current scholarship player from inside the state, a badge of respect for a program that attaches understandable importance to that cultural bond.
And he is, not very quietly, making it difficult — on a team that should in theory be too old and expensive for him to crack the rotation — for Darian DeVries to leave him on the bench.
“Trent’s done a really good job this summer,” DeVries said. “Like a lot of freshmen, you come in, you’ve got a lot to learn, a lot to grow into, but I think his adjustment to college basketball has been really good. …
“He puts a lot of time and work into it. What you saw today has been a product of all the work he’s put in this summer.”
The “today” DeVries referenced was Sisley’s game-high 21 points Wednesday night against Central Universidad de Bayamon, in the Hoosiers’ opening game of their preseason tour of Puerto Rico.
Sisley was comfortably IU’s standout performer in a comfortable 98-47 win at the Coliseo Guillermo Angulo. He was the only Hoosier to break 23 minutes. He needed just 12 field goal attempts to score those 21 points. And on a night when teammates struggled to find their range — Indiana shot just 9-of-33 from behind the arc — Sisley made all three of his 3-point attempts.
“Now he’s set the bar pretty high,” DeVries said, laughing, before adding: “Any time you’re a young player and you can have success, it’s always good for your confidence. ‘I’ve been doing some things in practice, I’ve been working hard, and now I’m getting rewarded for it in the game.’ That’s good.”
That throughline from practice to the game floor underwrites the building momentum around Sisley’s potential role this winter.
Last week at a practice DeVries opened to the media, Sisley consistently held his own against older, more experienced teammates. Both in drill work, and in 3-on-3 and 5-on-5 settings, the former Heritage Hills star rarely looked out of his depth.
That practice also served as a reminder that Sisley’s size is no small factor in his development.
Listed at 6-8, he’s currently the joint fourth-tallest player on the team, behind only Andrej Acimovic, Reed Bailey and Sam Alexis.
Bailey and Alexis look likely to share time at the five, though they could conceivably play together as the season develops, matchup-dependent. Acimovic offers multi-faceted promise as a big man with guard skills, but the Bosnia native signed late in the summer and hasn’t come over yet.
There is, behind players like Tucker DeVries and Nick Dorn (who is currently injured), room for Sisley to carve out a meaningful role on this team.
His experience playing his senior year at Montverde (Fla.) Academy helped flatten Sisley’s freshman learning curve, exposing him to high-end prep talent and a more college-like environment. And everything he’s put on the floor in front of independent observers thus far suggests that role might not be far away.
“It was good to get this first one out of the way,” Sisley said postgame Wednesday, playing his performance down, “but we’ve got two more this week, and obviously this whole season in front of us, so we’ve just got to keep building and getting better.”
On current evidence, few Hoosiers have made more of that process than the Santa Claus native. If his trajectory continues at the same pace, his coach will find it hard to keep him off the floor when the games start counting more seriously.
“He’s done a nice job of continuing to grow and get better and better,” DeVries said, “and I think that’s something he’s going to continue to do.”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU’s Trent Sisley turning heads, earning Darian DeVries’ trust in his freshman summer
Reporting by Zach Osterman, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
