NCAA Basketball Report News

Indiana needed to reload its backcourt after losing Conor Enright, Lamar Wilkerson and Tayton Conerway to graduation, and everyone else to the portal. Darian DeVries went out and landed one of the best point guard prospects in the portal, Markus Burton, who was the sixth best point guard in this transfer class, per 247Sports.

Burton comes to Indiana after three seasons at Notre Dame, but will have two years of eligibility left under the new NCAA’s five-year window rule. He’s a guy who’s been productive since his first day of college basketball and should be again this year once he’s fully recovered from the injury that shortened his last season.

G Markus Burton

• Position: Guard
• Year: Fourth
• Role: Starting point guard
• Previous school: Notre Dame

While he wasn’t playing for winning Irish teams, Burton has literally been a day-one starter, starting all 33 games as a freshman and averaging over 33 minutes per game. He led the team in scoring and assists per game as a freshman, with 17.5 and 4.5, respectively.

Burton led Notre Dame in scoring in all three seasons he spent in South Bend, but his sophomore year was his most prolific as a scorer. He averaged 21.3 points per game that year with games of 42, 33, and 30 points on the season.

2024-25 was also Burton’s best year from three point range, as he averaged 37.5% on just short of five attempts per game. His shooting appeared to regress a bit last season, but he only played ten games, so it’s hard to say how representative that is. He’s always shot above 82% from the free throw line, so there are signs that he can be a good shooter consistently.

Really the only question surrounding Burton this year will be how he settles into his role, now that he has more talent around him than he ever did at Notre Dame. His assist rate was closer to what you’d expect from a DeVries point guard his freshman year, but went back up again as a junior when he had Jalen Haralson on the floor with him.

A lot of this will depend on what DeVries wants him to do, both as a scorer and passer. Indiana needed a guy who could get downhill and get a bucket off the dribble last year, so he might have the green light to continue driving as he has throughout his career.

If he’s been shooting well this fall in practice though, DeVries might want him to hang around the perimeter and share some ball handling responsibilities with Bryce Lindsey to help space the floor for interior scorers like Samet Ygitoglu and Jaeden Mustaf.

It will be also interesting to see how much DeVries uses his shifty point guard to create interior looks for those guys. The Hoosiers simply did not have a center like Yigitoglu last year, so it’s hard to say how often he’s going to want his guards to get the ball to the big man.

Throughout his time in college, Burton has shown an ability to be a scorer and a passer, a threat from inside and out, so I have no doubt he will be a big asset to this team once he settles into his new role, whatever that may be.