'We haven't told him that yet': New Indiana basketball player Aleksa Ristic learning quickly

Indianapolis Star

2 days ago

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Aleksa Ristic spent a few minutes exchanging pleasantries with the other side Saturday, before Indiana's preseason game against Serbian club side Mega Superbet.
Then, he turned in 24 1/2 steady, meaningful minutes for Indiana in a 93-71 comeback win. It would have been easy to forget the players he was chatting with pregame had been his teammates longer than the ones he followed off the floor victorious at night's end.
Ristic, an incoming freshman from Nis, Serbia, signed with Indiana in June but only joined the Hoosiers in the days leading up to this preseason tour of Puerto Rico. He's spent the last two games, in his new coach's words, speeding up the process of settling into his new team.
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'It's hard, because Alex' — Ristic goes by Alex — 'has only been here a little while,' DeVries said postgame Wednesday. 'He doesn't even know a whole lot of the (plays). I would call something, it's like, 'Oh, we haven't even told him what that is yet.'
'But that's all fine, that's part of the game. He's done a really good job adjusting.'
Familiarity will come with time. Ristic's first job now is to make the best first impression possible.
It's going well so far.
A three-year pro for KK Dynamic in Serbia's top basketball league, Ristic averaged 13.6 points, 4.2 assists and 3.2 rebounds in his most recent senior campaign.
The primary reason he was late in joining Indiana this summer was his time spent playing with the Serbian U20 team at this summer's FIBA Eurobasket tournament. There, Ristic averaged 11.3 points and a team-high 6.3 assists per game playing alongside, among others, Andrej Musicki, who played 11-plus minutes for Mega on Saturday.
Beyond those pregame hellos with former teammates and friends, Ristic will have been focused on his own adjustment — one DeVries has not been shy about accelerating on this trip.
With Jason Drake kept at home due to injury, starting guards Tayton Conerway and Conor Enright comprise the bulk of Indiana's capable point guard stable right now. Ristic saw close to 17 minutes, with six points, three rebounds and two assists, in Wednesday's blowout win against Central Universidad de Bayamon.
Any doubts about Ristic's role with Indiana were put to rest with the Hoosiers' preseason opener. Despite being able to count his in-person Indiana career in days, Ristic took virtually every out-of-bounds pass as a point guard against Bayamon, and ran his team's offense accordingly.
Saturday presented a different test. Both Enright and Conerway struggled with foul trouble. Indiana as a whole struggled to grapple with Mega's aggressiveness and physicality and then, when the game turned 180 degrees, the Hoosiers needed steady hands at the tiller to keep the momentum that eventually crested in a 70-19 run driving forward.
More simply than all of that, point guard is a devilish position to play when you don't know what's supposed to be happening around you. Yet through these two games, Ristic has consistently just pushed forward.
'He's in a tough spot,' DeVries said after the midweek win over Bayamon. 'But we thought it was really important to get him here, get him in a few of our practices that we're allowed to have and get him out in the games.'
In an admittedly small sample size, Ristic has shown the ability to read and play with good pace. His shot mechanics are good and the ball comes out clean. And he doesn't look either overawed by his teammates' athletic level, or the responsibility of pulling them together with the ball in his hands.
There will be sterner tests in the months ahead. But Ristic looks like he's passing the first one.
'In his situation,' DeVries said, 'it's pretty difficult to do. I think he's done a nice job.'