Lamar Wilkerson is making a great case for Big Ten player of the year. He is an excellent scorer, leader, and defender.
He is also Indiana’s biggest problem.
That sounds like a joke, but when looking at the box score of any Hoosier loss lately, there is a glaring similarity staring fans in the face. When Lamar Wilkerson doesn’t drop 30, Indiana doesn’t just lose; they collapse.
While riding the hot hand of one of the nation’s best shooters has been a fun new wave of Indiana basketball, if the Hoosiers want to be more than a footnote in the 2026 bracket, they desperately need to find a second option.
Wilkerson is averaging 21.1 points per game on the season. Over the past five games, Wilkerson has seen his number called more than before. In the overtime thriller against Wisconsin, he scored IU’s final 10 points in the win. In Friday's blowout loss to Purdue, he accounted for 18 of the team’s 35 second-half points.
The Hoosiers have been completely dependent on Lamar Wilkerson. Following Wilkerson’s 41-point explosion against Oregon, forward Tucker DeVries summarized the team’s current philosophy.
“When he gets going like that, it makes things easy for everyone,” DeVries said. “At that point, it’s get out of the way and let him cook.”
While ‘letting him cook’ works against bottom-tier teams like Oregon, elite programs like Illinois and Purdue have already written the blueprint for extinguishing the flame.
Illinois and Purdue were able to completely neutralize Wilkerson’s impact. Illinois held Wilkerson scoreless until the game was out of reach in the second half. Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer hounded him to a two-point first-half performance at Purdue. When Wilkerson isn’t the answer, the Hoosiers look clueless.
Purdue moved the ball with 24 assists, finding multiple ways to score. Indiana, meanwhile, looked stagnant, often waiting until the end of the shot clock for Wilkerson to bail them out with a contested jump shot. Throughout the course of the season, head coach Darian DeVries has praised Wilkerson’s evolution.
“Now you’re seeing the full package of what he’s able to do,” DeVries said postgame after Oregon.
But for Indiana to survive the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, the full package needs to include someone else.
Whether it be Sam Alexis, the forward who has been crucial in multiple games for the Hoosiers this year, or the resurgence of the shooting duo of Nick Dorn, and Tucker DeVries. The Indiana Hoosiers can no longer afford to be a one-man show.
Someone has to show up alongside Wilkerson.
Some might argue that Indiana’s system is designed this way and is performing exactly how it should as a team. Darian DeVries had to build an entire team from scratch in only a month. This team has glaring flaws; they don’t rebound well, lack a true center, and desperately need a scoring guard alongside Wilkerson.
But what more can you ask of a first-year head coach?
DeVries has brought a modern, floor-spacing offense to Bloomington that naturally favors a high-volume sniper. With the Hoosiers sitting at 17-10, the team wins by the three-point shot and flounders in its absence. Wilkerson has delivered some massive resume-changing wins for the Hoosiers as of late, securing Quad 1 wins at UCLA and home against Purdue by leaning on the three-point shooting of their star.
“You’d rather be playing your best basketball in March than January,” Wilkerson said postgame after Oregon.
For the Hoosiers, their best basketball is team-oriented basketball. Fast-paced, loud, and a high-energy offense that doesn’t crumble when Lamar Wilkerson misses consecutively.
Indiana heads into the final stretch of the season with four massive games, starting at home on Tuesday against Northwestern at 7 p.m. Eastern on FS1.
The opportunity to punch a ticket to postseason basketball is in front of the Hoosiers. But if someone doesn’t step up to carry the load alongside Lamar Wilkerson, the Hoosiers could be the ones watching the big dance from outside the ballroom.
COLUMN: The Hoosiers better be goldfish
