Analysis: Is Josh Newkirk a good fit for Indiana?

There was one thing you knew you could count on Sunday when it was announced that Josh Newkirk was headed to Indiana.

Instant analysis from the Indiana fan base.

Newkirk is not a 5-star recruit, he isn’t transferring in with crazy numbers and he didn’t come out of high school as a top 50 ranked kid.

And so the tone of the analysis was going to be predictable.

Tom Crean recruits another project. He probably won’t even be here by the time the 2016-17 season begins. What is Crean thinking this time? The two players he has brought in the last few weeks are players he could have gotten much later in the process. This isn’t Indiana basketball as I once knew it.

And on and on and on it goes.

So, to those of you out there singing that song: Thanks for at least being predictable.

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on Josh Newkirk. I saw him play live one time in Assembly Hall against IU and he looked pretty good in that game. Now, did the Hoosiers make him look better than he really was? Not sure (but that was always a possibility last season). I have a pretty limited study sample here. But at the very least, I thought he looked like a player who could contribute at the Division I level.

Beyond that, you have to rely on statistics.

If you just look at the sophomore numbers that are being thrown around (5.9 points, 2.7 assists, 38 percent shooting from the field and 30 percent from 3-point range) you’re probably going to come away pretty underwhelmed.

I get that. What I don’t really know, however, is how much his injury impacted those numbers. We all know that Newkirk had microfracture surgery on his left knee May 6 and that his lateral meniscus was also repaired.

What I don’t seem to have a feel for is how much that injury impacted his sophomore numbers.

Here is what I do know. In his first 24 games last season, he played 17 minutes or more per game. But in seven of his last nine games, he played 12 minutes or less.

So something was obviously different. Was he injured and playing limited minutes because of that? Or was it a coach’s decision? I can’t seem to find anything that documents that.

And so that’s my first question. My next question is what kind of shooter is Newkirk? If you just take that one little slice of his shooting as a sophomore at Pitt last year, you come to the conclusion that he’s not a great shooter. Again, 38 percent from the field and 30 percent from 3-point range are not something to write home about.

But two things jump out to me there. First, he didn’t shoot a lot of 3-pointers so I’m not sure you think of him in that vein. He had 24 games a year ago where he attempted two 3-pointers or less.

The other thing, though, that makes me wonder about his shooting is that as a freshman at Pitt he shot 46.3 percent from the field and 43.4 percent from 3-point range. He made 62-of-134 shots from the field and 23-of-53 3-pointers. He had a game against North Carolina State as a freshman where he scored 20 points and was 5-of-5 from 3-point range.

The other thing about his freshman year was that he was really coming on at the end. In the last 10 games he averaged 19.5 minutes and 6.4 points per game. And then his first 24 games of his sophomore year, he played at least 17 minutes per game.

All of which makes me think that his knee may have been bothering him toward the end of last year. Or mysteriously, his level of play just slipped off and he wasn’t the player he had been to that point in his Pitt career.

I do know one thing and that’s he seemed to be a pretty capable point guard at Pitt. His assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.95 ranks as tied for sixth in program history. To me, that’s a significant statistic at the point guard position. You want someone who can lead the offense, distribute the ball and get your shooters in the right position to get shots.

I cannot say with certainty that Newkirk will ever be more than just a role player at Indiana. Again, the sample size is too small.

But I’m also not ready to write this off as a mistake in recruiting by Crean and his staff either.

There is simply too much that needs to happen both in terms of how he responds from his surgery and how he looks when he is able to play with his future IU teammates before we can really provide accurate analysis here.

I just think there are too many questions still to be answered.