Myles Rice Scouting Report

Myles Rice is an Indiana Hoosier! Who is he, what does he do, and how does he fit with their roster?

Mike Woodson is quickly changing the attitude towards his program in a short amount of time. Woodson responded to a rough season and a five-star decommitment by pulling a surprise commitment from another five-star in Bryson Tucker.

He followed that by landing highly-coveted Washington State transfer Myles Rice on Saturday, April 13th. Rice is the 18th-ranked transfer currently in the portal per 247Sports, and plays a style of ball that Indiana desperately needed last season.

Woodson then followed up Rice’s decision by securing the number one player in the transfer portal, former Arizona Center Oumar Ballo. On top of that, former Stanford guard Kanaan Carlyle is visiting Bloomington this weekend and Indiana is the frontrunner in his recruitment.

A lot is going on in Hoosier land, but for now, let’s talk about the second domino to fall this offseason in Myles Rice. Who is he, what does he bring, and how does he fit on this roster?

Profile

Myles Rice is a six-foot-two-inch (or six-foot-three-inch depending on where you look), 175-pound point guard out of Tyrone, Georgia. A three-star recruit, Rice was redshirted in the first two seasons of his career – once for basketball reasons and the next due to a Hodgkin's Lymphoma diagnosis in the Summer of 2022.

Rice ultimately beat cancer and went into remission on June 1st, 2023, and was cleared to play basketball again, instantly becoming one of the best stories in the sport.

Rice went on to have an outstanding freshman season for the Cougars, leading them to their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2008 and winning the Pac-12 Rookie of the Year in the process.

Rice was the team’s second-leading scorer with 14.8 points per game and led the team in assists with 3.8 per contest. He had mediocre-to-poor efficiency numbers, shooting 43.9% from the field and 27.5% from three. 

While you would like to see those numbers be a bit higher, it is entirely normal for freshmen to struggle with their efficiency. I fully expect those numbers to rise throughout his career, especially considering many of the shots he took were difficult, off-the-dribble looks.

The crown jewel of Rice’s season was a 35-point, 8-assist outburst against Stanford in which he hit five threes. He did hit a bit of a rookie wall towards the end of the year, shooting just 2-for-28 (7%) from three in the final month of the season.

How he plays

There’s a lot to like about Rice’s game, starting with his IQ. Whether it is penetrating open areas of the court in transition, knowing where his teammates are, or being in the right place defensively, Rice displays an acute ability to make the right decisions. He knows the scheme, the scouting report, and he knows where everyone on his team fits into it.

Rice’s IQ shows up most in his defensive play. He doesn’t fall asleep and has an active body when he’s off the ball. I wouldn’t call him a lockdown on-ball defender by any means, but he is sticky on screens, contests well, and is almost always in the defender’s face when they catch the ball:

One of the things I learned working for a college basketball team is the importance of being in a good position on the catch. When the ball is in the air and flying to your man, you need to react quickly, close out to your man, and be in his lap when that ball gets there. Indiana struggled with that last season, and Rice will help greatly in that area.

I’m not sure Rice ever turns into a great on-ball defender, but even if he only serves as a high-IQ team defender, that is still a major strength.

In addition to his smarts, Rice has instinctual scoring ability. Although he isn’t the most efficient scorer (again, I can’t emphasize enough how normal that is for freshmen) Rice demonstrates an ability to score at all three levels. 

More important than his shooting percentages are his attempts. Rice is not afraid to shoot the ball and is comfortable taking difficult shots. 37% of the freshman’s attempts came at the rim, 33% came from the elbows, and 27% came from above-the-break threes. 

Washington State used Rice in an abundance of pick-and-rolls this season. The freshman point guard posted great scoring and assist analytics out of these situations. He is an adept bounce-passer when hitting the rim runner, and is very comfortable scoring in the pick-and-roll setting as well.

Rice is also an excellent player in transition. He recognizes vulnerabilities before the defense does and bursts to the rim to take advantage. He has great body control and can finish in a variety of ways in the open court.

This diverse shot profile shows the mark of a scorer, not just a shooter. When I watch Rice score, the word “dynamic” comes to mind. He has few limitations in how he can get his points, he just needs to become more efficient. 

However, one of those “few limitations” in Rice’s game is his catch-and-shoot ability. He ranked in the 11th percentile of players on catch-and-shoot effective field goal percentage. 

Although his shot mechanics look good, Rice has a very slow gather into his shot. This results in him having to pass up shots or turn open looks into contested ones:

Getting his release a bit snappier will surely help Rice convert more of his attempts. A quicker release is also something that – you guessed it – improves with age and experience.

Another area of growth for Rice in terms of his scoring profile is the 5-12 foot range, or what I like to call the “sand wedge” area. Rice tends to shoot jumpers or layups with no in-between. Sometimes he attacks the rim with a layup when he’d be better off keeping the defender on his hip and floating a chip shot over the top of the big man.

Drake recognized this in their tournament game against Washington State. Rice started out hot, but Drake eventually neutralized him by not letting him get to his jumper and keeping their big man at the rim to prevent layups. The floater was there for him all game, but he continually passed it up in favor of highly contested layups at wonky angles.

Trey Galloway is as good in this area as I’ve seen, so maybe his new teammate can teach him a thing or two about scoring from 5-12 feet.

Rice also does not have great acceleration with the ball in his hands. However, when he does get to his top speed, he’s pretty dog gone fast. This makes him dangerous in transition, where there are more gaps on the court for him to get to top gear:

His lack of quick-twitch athleticism can sometimes give him trouble in the halfcourt setting, where defenses can wall him up. Rice is mostly a straight-line driver, and will need to develop some more change of direction to be less predictable on drives:

How he fits

Anytime you can add someone who scores 14.8 points per game, it’s a good addition. 3.8 assists per game on top of that sweetens the deal even more. 

But the real kicker is that Myles Rice achieved that as a freshman. He has three years of eligibility remaining and is only going to get better. I’m super excited to see how he improves because he’s already an excellent player with minimal experience. 

Throw on his 35-point game against Stanford this past season and you’ll witness a player who can hurt a defense from anywhere on the court. Transition, half-court, catch-and-shoot, pick and roll, mid-range, three-point range, you name it – he did it in that game. That is the peak of what Rice can be.

Throw on a game later in the season, like their NCAA Tournament game against Drake, and you’ll see a player who can be shut down if defended in the right way. Still, he’s a smart enough player to help in other ways when his shot isn’t falling.

For Indiana, this is an A+ pickup. Mike Woodson said he still believes the college game is played inside-out, but there was no “out” last year for the Hoosiers. There were simply no dynamic players in the Hoosier backcourt last season.

Xavier Johnson was quick with the ball in his hands but didn’t put any pressure on the defense from the three-point line (1.5 attempts per game). I love Trey Galloway, but his shot-making profile is limited and he cannot carry an offense every night. 

Myles Rice, on the other hand, can be relied upon to provide consistent offense even when the defense is trying to take him away.

With Oumar Ballo now becoming the most recent addition to the roster, Woodson will be implementing an inside-out attack once more. That may scare you after last year, but I think there’s reason to believe this year may be different. 

Woodson is beelining for dynamic, scoring guards in the portal who will perfectly compliment the Ballo/Reneau frontcourt. A three-out-two-in offense can certainly work, but you need to have those dynamic compliments to the frontcourt (see Purdue & Arizona).

Rice is the first piece of the puzzle for making a more cohesive and complimentary offense. Kanaan Carlyle has a good chance of being the next. Rice, Carlyle (or someone like him), and Mackenzie Mgbako would be a great trio to pair with the frontcourt – light years of improvement over last year’s supporting cast. 

Let’s not confuse it – last season was dismal by Indiana’s standards, but Mike Woodson is making big moves in the offseason. Next year’s team is shaping up to be much more dangerous than last year and Myles Rice is a big reason for that.