Under second-year head coach Scott Heady, the UIndy Men’s Basketball team looks to build on last season’s 15-13 record and establish itself as a contender again in the Great Lakes Valley Conference.
On Oct. 29, Heady’s squad will open its exhibition schedule with a road matchup at Purdue, the preseason No. 1 team in both the Associated Press and Coaches Poll. Heady is no stranger to facing Purdue. In 2018, while serving as head coach at Marian University, Heady led his team to West Lafayette to face the Boilermakers in an exhibition match. The Knights hung tough, trailing by just eight points at halftime, before falling 75–56.
“You play there [at Purdue] for the experience,” Heady said. “How often as a Division II college athlete do you get a chance to go on the road and play the number one-ranked team in the country in one of the best environments in college basketball?”
In the current state of college athletics, schools at all levels are forced to recruit and use the transfer portal more than ever. With minimal restrictions on transferring and eligibility, players can enroll at a different school as many times as they want, according to NCSA, a national recruiting service.
Heady and staff dealt with this over this past offseason, as the Hounds only returned five players from the 2024-25 roster. Two of those five are redshirt freshmen in Nate Orr and Tyler Parrish.
“Due to the nature of the transfer portal, I feel like we are getting better recruits out of high school than we ever could before the portal existed,” Heady said. “Of course, we went into the portal and grabbed players to fit our needs, but I really like our freshmen class. I believe that the guys we have recruited will be able to play early in their careers.”
The 2025–26 freshman class features Chase Barnes, Ethan Edwards, Elad Bakshi and Parker Lepla. Barnes and Edwards are homegrown Indiana talents, while Lepla joins the program from Michigan and Bakshi arrives from Israel.
Among the players Heady expects to lean on this season are Kelvin Amoako, Pierce Thomas and Noah Kon. Amoako came on strong during the second half of last season, while Thomas and Kon flashed early promise before injuries sidelined them for the remainder of the season, according to Heady.
“I will be the loudest player on the floor, expect me to be the first one on the ground and same with the boards (rebounds),” Amoako said. “This team has made its identity surrounding defense, which we hope will change the results of the many close games we lost last year.”
The Hounds played four overtime games last year and had five losses of five points or less, according to UIndy Athletics. UIndy’s defense struggled last season as it ranked 200 out of 290 in Division II in opponent points per game, according to the NCAA.
In the 2025-26 GLVC preseason poll, the Hounds were picked to finish sixth, which would be an improvement over their ninth-place finish in the conference during the 2024-25 season.
The Hounds will open the season on the road against Kentucky Wesleyan on Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. They will make their home debut on Nov. 16, hosting Grand Valley State at Nicoson Hall.
