6-11 Ghana center to debut
Indiana gets its final tuneup for the upcoming season today against Saint Joseph’s (Ind.) College.
It will be the first chance for freshman Bawa Muniru to gain game experience.
Muniru sat out Wednesday’s 96-73 exhibition victory over Grace awaiting eligibility clearance from the NCAA. He received the positive word Thursday.
“The one beauty of this is that he was cleared to practice (earlier). It would have really been a nightmare if he hadn’t been cleared to practice,” IU coach Tom Crean said Sunday. “He hasn’t missed any time there, but he hasn’t always felt like a willing participant to get out there. There’s a certain amount of anxiety in him right now. The last couple of days, it’s been different.”
The 6-11 center from Tumu, Ghana, was the 111th rated recruit in 2009 and the 14th best center, according to Rivals.com.
“He’s worked very hard. … There’s going to be three parts to Bawa right now,” Crean said. “It’s his practice time and what he does there. It’s what he does outside of practice, whether it’s his individual workouts, before or after practice things, and then it’s going to be game experience.”
Muniru averaged 16.6 points and 8.9 rebounds as a senior at Madison (Ala.) Academy and attended Mount Zion Academy a year ago. Crean said Muniru’s biggest role will be on defense.
“We’ve got to put up resistance at the basket,” Crean said. “We didn’t have any resistance on people last year. I’m not saying we have to foul, but we can’t be passive inside, we have to have a presence.
“The one thing Bawa brings is legitimate shot-blocking presence. He’s learning more and more. We have as many defensive drills for him as we do right anything else. He’s got to really, really learn.”
Crean said the Hoosiers are not “good enough at any one position right now,” to consider redshirting players.
“We had a situation (Wednesday) where (forwards) Bobby (Capobianco) and Tom (Pritchard) had four fouls on them with time still in the game,” Crean said. “We’ll see how it goes. Could we redshirt somebody? I guess we could, but again I don’t know if we are deep enough to take that shot right now.”
Indiana’s biggest questions entering this season centered on its retooled defense.