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International recruiting has become 'huge part' of college landscape and something Indiana 'deeply involved' in

headshotby: Alec Lasley02/19/26allasley

The world of college basketball recruiting has become a blurry and mixed line of high school and the transfer portal. But one recent trend has been internationally with player coming to the US to play key roles for their respective college programs — and Indiana isn’t shying away from it.

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Whether it’s a lineup at Illinois built around European players, some of whom played professionally for years overseas, UNC adding Luka Bogavac, Duke’s Dame Sarr or Omer Mayer at Purdue, some of the best teams around the country are building international pipelines.

While going all international won’t be something a program does anytime soon, the ability to supplement the transfer portal and high school with international flare is the new age of college basketball.

“I think the international recruiting has changed a lot with the addition of NIL. It used to be a lot harder for international players to come over because there wasn’t quite the incentive to do so, financially,” Indiana coach Darian DeVries said during this week’s radio show. “So now that there’s an NIL component to it, it makes a lot more sense for international players to come over here, just because of the money that’s involved. That’s why you’re seeing so many more players being added to teams from everywhere across the world.”

While Indiana’s roster is made up nearly entirely of veteran players from the transfer portal, it did bring on two international players to round out its freshman class last year. Aleksa Ristic and Andrew Acimovic both came from Serbia and Bosnia, respectively.

Ristic has played sparingly this season for Indiana after averaging 13.6 points and shooting 38.6 percent from three playing in the top league in Serbia. Acimovic is expected to redshirt this year at Indiana after averaging 17.3 points and shooting 39 percent from three in the second tier division in Bosnia.

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IU assistant coach Drew Adams has even been overseas on a few different occasions since joining the Indiana staff to scout international targets, in addition to watching different divisions of Team USA play.

Indiana remains active in the 2026 class with 5-star Miikka Muurinen. He was originally playing for AZ Compass Prep but decided to return overseas and finish his high school career playing in Serbia.

While Muurinen is not the typical European case study that programs are using now, it’s another data point to emphasize the importance of international recruiting. And, how easy it has become.

“That’s really how recruiting has changed over the years,” DeVries continued. “Everything that you do now, it’s just at the touch of your fingertips of being able to see kids and watch them on film and getting enough data and video that you need to get those evaluations. So it’s become a huge part of the college basketball game … something that we’re certainly deeply involved with and excited about adding to what we already do within the United States.”

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