Report: Austin Etherington Requests Transfer

Indiana and Purdue are two programs that have been absolutely plagued with transfers over the last few years and that doesn't appear to be stopping. First it was Ronnie Johnson at Purdue and now Austin Etherington has asked for his release from Indiana according to Dustin Dopirak of the Herald Times. Etherington is the only remaining upper classmen from last year's squad and now with his departure the Hoosiers will be relying mostly on juniors and sophomores to lead.

Etherington has suffered from a ton of injuries since his arrival at Indiana and those have set him back a bit in his development. As a red shirt sophomore last season he was seeing significant court time for the first time in his three years. Grabbing several starts he was averaging about 10 minutes a game throughout the whole season. There is a good chance that Austin saw some frustrations with his fluctuating playing time. In the conference season alone he had games of 3 minutes, DNP, 17 minutes, 18, 19, 19, 21, 11, 10, 6, and 9. That was just in the first 11 games. So you can understand where he would be feeling uncertain about his future role. He had a season high 24 minutes in a win against Ohio State and then the last three games of the season played a combined 17 minutes.

The loss of Austin likely isn't one that will be felt a ton on the court in a statistics sense, but he was a vocal guy in the locker room that kept things moving forward. One of the guys that originally came on and showed faith in Indiana he was a big contributor in the recruitments of Cody Zeller and Yogi Ferrell. Whether we saw his impact directly or not, there is little doubt that he has had a huge impact indirectly on the state of this program. It's a shame to see him go, but we wish him a lot of luck and minutes wherever he winds up. Thanks for your services to the squad big fella.