With Franklin Doubtful, Anthony Leal Looks to Make Most of Opportunities

Anthony Leal knows what it's like to work his way into big minutes, and he might have the opportunity to do that for Indiana basketball in the coming games.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — When Anthony Leal was a freshman at Bloomington South, the team only had six players in the first game, and Leal was the only one that wasn't starting.

The lesson he learned is that it's a part of the process, and by his senior year, Leal went on to become the all-time leading scorer in the school's history. He also led the Panthers to an undefeated regular season and a No. 1 ranking in the state of Indiana in 2019-20 while taking home the honor of Indiana Mr. Basketball.

Now Leal finds himself in a similar situation in college. Indiana has played 11 games this season, and Leal has appeared in just six of them.

He's working to find minutes in the Hoosiers' rotation, but with Armaan Franklin rolling an ankle against Maryland and being ruled doubtful for the next couple games, Leal has a chance to step in and make an impact.

"Whenever I get in, I have to play my role and play as hard as I can and just do what my teammates and coaches trust me to do," Leal said. "And that's just play as hard as I can, shoot when I'm open and make hustle plays that are gonna lead us to wins."

Leal has only scored in one contest he's played in so far when he scored four points against North Alabama. When Franklin went down Monday night, Leal ended up playing 12 minutes off the bench. He only attempted one shot, but he also came up with a steal.

Franklin has been Indiana's most consistent guard this season, and even though Al Durham and Rob Phinisee have been playing more aggressive as of late, Indiana will need its committee of guards to help fill Franklin's absence.

That's where Leal can see extended minutes in a role where he will be asked to take and make shots. Coming out of high school, Leal's biggest attribute was his ability to knock down shots from the outside.

He is just 1-for-6 from behind the 3-point line this season. But recently, Leal has got back into a routine that he used to do in high school.

"The most recent thing I've kind of picked back up is I've started to make 500 threes per day," Leal said. "I'm trying to hold myself accountable to doing that every day because I know it's not only going to make me a better shooter, but it's going to increase my confidence, and I think that's one of the biggest things for me is just to be confident in my game and be confident into what got me here."

Leal isn't the only freshmen who might see more minutes either. Trey Galloway has established himself as a starter on this Indiana team, but head coach Archie Miller has said the last couple of weeks that he wants to play Leal, Khristian Lander and Jordan Geronimo more.

All three of them played against Maryland, and all three will likely see more minutes going forward.

Leal thinks the biggest thing for the freshmen has been how close they've all become, which will help translate to on-court success.

"On the court, we love to win," Leal said. "Off the court, we're all always ready to have fun and hang out with each other, so I think that's definitely going to pay off for us in the long run because we're so close off the court and we love to be around each other."

The four freshmen live with each other, and their days have the same schedule to it every time. They wake up early to go get tested for COVID-19, then they go out to eat, they practice, they come back exhausted from practice and will either watch TV or a sporting event that's on, go to sleep and do the process all over again the next day.

"It's normal, uninteresting," Leal said with a laugh.

The "uninteresting" life for these freshmen are all for the common goal to win basketball games for Indiana this season.

Indiana has climbed itself out a 0-2 hole to begin conference play and are now .500 in the Big Ten. The Hoosiers' next game will likely be without their second-leading scorer at a place they haven't won at since 1998.

Leal knows this is an opportunity for him and the other freshmen to step up when called upon.

"If the opportunities is called and our name gets called to where we need to step up, we're all ready to do so," Leal said. "We're just really excited to try to get a win, especially at Wisconsin, which we all know is a place we haven't won as a program in so many years."

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