IU basketball's Jalen Hood-Schifino has huge opportunity in Big Ten tournament

CHICAGO – Jalen Hood-Schifino spent the last three months of Indiana’s regular season maturing from elite recruit-turned-promising freshman into a first-round NBA draft pick by embracing moments like the one waiting for him Friday night.

For Hood-Schifino, everything from Christmas on was a proving ground. Northwestern at home. Ohio State at home. Michigan on the road. Most memorably, Purdue on the road.

Carrying the lion’s share of the responsibility at point guard with his running mate, fifth-year senior Xavier Johnson, sidelined by what turned out to be a season-ending broken foot, Hood-Schifino steered the Hoosiers to 12 Big Ten wins and a tournament double bye. In the process, he won Big Ten freshman of the year and vaulted himself into the lottery conversation.

Now, the stage grows. The lights burn hotter. In the setting awaiting him inside Chicago’s United Center this weekend, Hood-Schifino can begin taking a final step toward cementing both his legacy at IU and his position as one of the most-appealing college guards in this summer’s draft.

Big weekend:IU enters Big Ten tournament action

“I just think his maturity, honestly,” senior forward Trayce Jackson-Davis said, when asked what allowed Hood-Schifino to take on such a large role this winter. “Especially with X going down, we relied on him heavily being a lead ball handler and in the thick of the Big Ten season. When you come in as a freshman, playing in hostile environments, and you can do the things he’s done, especially at Purdue and things of that nature, it shows what he can do.”

Hood-Schifino’s reputation hardly needs burnishing. His 13.4 points, 4.1 rebounds and 3.8 assists won him conference freshman of the year from both the coaches and the media, and Hood-Schifino’s professional stock has risen steadily.

He entered college among the most-promising freshmen in the Big Ten. In the intervening months, he’s left that group to join the class of first round-level NBA prospects, his growth not lost on a head coach who is well aware of what’s required at the professional level.

“He’s improved,” Woodson said. “There’s no doubt about that. From the time I saw him in high school, he’s made a major jump.

“I think the fact that we lost Xavier Johnson early on put him in a tough position. We didn’t bring him in here to log all the minutes at the point guard. But the fact that he’s been put in that position, he’s done a tremendous job of helping us get to his point.”

Woodson’s candor, while frank, is unsurprising.

There was no reasonable future wherein IU would have wanted Hood-Schifino to have to play more than 75% of available minutes this season, or to be eighth in the Big Ten in possessions used per league game. Not because he wasn’t talented, but because Johnson — experienced and tested — could provide an umbrella under which his freshman teammate might blossom as the season went along.

Then Johnson broke his foot in the loss at Kansas. Hood-Schifino no longer had the benefit of a veteran wingman.

And he blossomed anyway.

“He’s made a major jump in being able to run my stuff in terms of offensive stuff and still be able to score the ball and do the things he’s capable of doing,” Woodson said. “He’s done a lot of good things on both sides of the ball to help us win games, and that’s what’s important.”

Now comes the biggest audience for which Hood-Schifino has yet played.

Legends are made in the postseason in college basketball. When the stakes are highest, finding your best means more. If his 35 points in the Hoosiers’ win two weeks ago at Purdue were Hood-Schifino’s defining performance to date, anything similar across the next four weeks would grow his spiking reputation exponentially.

That postseason begins Friday night against the winner of Maryland-Minnesota. Unlike last season, when the Hoosiers needed wins to get into the field of 68, their NCAA tournament outlook is secure. But a team with one of the best high-low combinations in college basketball will go as far across the next month as that duo can take them.

An All-American and national-player-of-the-year candidate in the post, Jackson-Davis will draw urgency from the knowledge that these are his last few games in an Indiana uniform.

They might be, too, for Hood-Schifino. His remarkable first college season appears to have put him in the enviable position of not needing a second one, the NBA beckoning once this journey concludes.

Time runs shorter. Lights shine brighter. Status and draft stock grow hand in hand with every individual success, every team win. And, as Woodson said finishing one of his post-practice answers about his impressive freshman point guard, Hood-Schifino still has “a long way to go.”

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana basketball's Jalen Hood-Schifino set for Big Ten tournament