Nick Dorn Emerging as Indiana Basketball's X-Factor with Role, Minutes 'Growing'

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Darian DeVries foreshadowed, if warned, this was coming. Now, Nick Dorn is proving Indiana basketball's first-year coach right.

Dorn missed the first two games of his Hoosier career — not to mention almost six months of summer workouts and five exhibition contests — due to foot surgery before debuting Nov. 12 against Milwaukee.

The junior guard scored 8 points in a seven-minute, foul-disrupted introduction, but he was shut out in four minutes vs. Incarnate Word on Nov. 16 and scored 6 points in 15 minutes vs. Lindenwood on Nov. 20.

Through three games, Dorn hadn't done much to write home about. Still, DeVries saw encouraging signs and an intriguing future for Dorn, who'd only practiced for a few weeks before playing in a live-game setting.

"He's done a good job," DeVries said Nov. 24. "He's getting more and more comfortable. He's just going to continue to get him more comfortable with what we're doing too. He's never played in the system, both offensively and defensively. Again, I like what I'm seeing from him in practice.

"I think he's continuing to get better and better there. We're looking forward to seeing where that could ultimately grow into."

Five days later, DeVries saw a glimpse. Dorn went 4-for-5 shooting, all from beyond the arc, and knocked down a pair of free throws to score 14 points in the Hoosiers' 100-56 win over Bethune-Cookman on Nov. 29.

"You can obviously see why we're so excited to have him back," DeVries said afterwards, "because he does bring a lot of firepower for us right now coming off the bench."

But Dorn failed to carry his momentum into the Hoosiers' Big Ten opener Dec. 3 against Minnesota. He missed his only shot in 12 minutes of action while committing three fouls and grabbing two rebounds in Indiana's loss to the Golden Gophers.

The outing felt like an immediate step backward after Dorn's first big step forward, putting the 6-foot-7, 225-pounder at a crossroad. He found the right avenue.

Dorn scored 15 points, all in the second half, on five 3-pointers in an 87-78 loss to Louisville on Dec. 6. He followed with 13 points on 5-for-7 shooting from the field, including 2 of 4 from distance, in a 113-72 victory over Penn State on Dec. 9.

Dorn's lone struggle, going 0-for-3 shooting at Kentucky, still netted 7 points at the foul stripe, and he rebounded with 15 points vs. Chicago State on Dec. 20 and 11 points vs. Siena on Dec. 22.

Collectively, in the five-game span that followed his scoreless night at Minnesota and led into the Hoosiers' near-two-week winter break, Dorn averaged 12.2 points and 3.2 rebounds in 21 minutes per game. He went 18-for-34 shooting from the field, a 52.9% clip, and 15-of-31 shooting on 3-pointers, a 48.4% rate.

Dorn, after an injury-riddled start to his Indiana career, has turned the corner.

"He's doing a really good job like we talked about," DeVries said Dec. 21 after Indiana's win over Siena. "He's giving us something additional especially from a shooting standpoint. He's one of those guys who can get two, three, four in a row in a hurry."

After failing to eclipse 20 minutes in each of his first seven outings, Dorn has played 22-plus minutes in three of the Hoosiers' past four games. The lone exception came against Chicago State, when he made five 3-pointers in 19 minutes of action.

Dorn, who spent the first two years of his career at Elon before transferring to Indiana in the spring, has steadily gotten his legs underneath him and enters winter break in a quality spot health-wise.

"I feel great," Dorn said Dec. 21 after beating Siena. "It's getting better every game. I feel like conditioning gets better every game, just by getting even more in-game reps playing in this environment, I feel like that's helping a lot. I feel like it's picking up very well."

DeVries touted the plan setup by Indiana's training staff as a key to getting Dorn back to full health. Dorn worked out extensively with head strength and conditioning coach Ryan Horn and athletic trainer Andrew Vereen, and he made consistent strides while ramping up to game speed.

Dorn didn't rush the process. He impressed DeVries with his patience and willingness to trust the plan and build himself back to a point where he wasn't at risk to reaggravate the injury. Like his recovery, Dorn stayed the course despite a slow start once he was cleared to play.

Now, he's flourishing.

The Charlotte native is Indiana's fifth-leading scorer, averaging 8.2 points per game, and his 44.7% 3-point shooting rate is best on the team among those with more than one attempt. He's also 17-for-20 shooting at the foul stripe, and his 85% clip ranks second among Hoosiers with more than two free throw attempts this season.

Yet for as much as Dorn has proven offensively, he's stood out to DeVries in other areas, too.

"What I've been most impressed with as he continues to get his game legs under him is his defense and rebounding," DeVries said. "Those are the areas we're looking for from everybody. We talk to guys all the time right now about, 'If you want your role to extend or you want to gain a role, those are a couple of areas where you can really help us.'

"Because that's something we really need and prioritize that on top of whatever else that you're good at."

Subsequently, Dorn has a compelling case to see an extended role moving forward — or, if nothing else, continue averaging over 20 minutes per game off the bench, as he did in the five-game stretch that began with his breakout against Louisville.

DeVries acknowledged entering the break he's exploring ways, and lineup combinations, to increase Dorn's role.

"We all can see he can certainly shoot the ball," DeVries said. "His minutes from a rotation standpoint, as his minutes are growing, we're trying to figure out some of those rotations to get him the amount of minutes that he probably needs to be getting."

Dorn has emerged as Indiana's true X-factor. The Hoosiers have a pair of potential All-Big Ten selections in sixth-year senior guard Lamar Wilkerson and sixth-year senior forward Tucker DeVries, but Indiana has lacked a consistent third scorer behind them.

Sixth-year senior guard Tayton Conerway, third on the team at 11.9 points per game, and senior forwards Reed Bailey and Sam Alexis have each delivered standout individual performances on multiple occasions, but perhaps not to the frequency Darian DeVries would prefer.

At his best, Dorn is a microwave shooter, one who can change games if he heats up from beyond the arc. He appeared to find his stroke entering the break — and if he still has it when Indiana opens Big Ten play Jan. 4 against Washington, the size of his role, and impact, figures to expand.