Indiana guard Trey Galloway is recovering from a knee injury ahead of his fifth-year senior season.
Galloway suffered the injury prior to Indiana’s regular season finale against Michigan State and underwent surgery last spring. He played seven minutes against the Spartans but didn’t suit up for the two Big Ten Tournament games against Penn State and Nebraska.
Galloway did not fully recover in time for Indiana’s eight-week summer practice session in Bloomington, which wrapped up in late July. But he’s hopeful he’ll be ready when the real games begin.
“It’s a long journey. There’s days it’s tough. It’s feeling really good, and I 100 percent believe I’ll be back to my normal self if I just keep doing the right things and stuff like that,” Galloway said on The Player’s Perspective podcast hosted by Miller Kopp and presented by Hoosiers Connect, the official NIL collective of Indiana Athletics, which was published Monday.
“So I’m just excited to get back to my normal self because it makes you realize how blessed we really are to be healthy and be doing things we get to do. Because it’s not easy, there’s a lot of injuries in basketball that happen. So you just gotta be aware of that and know that you can’t take it for granted and stuff.”
This was such a huge sequence by Trey Galloway during Indiana’s comeback…And watch the bench reaction after he drew the offensive foul. #iubb pic.twitter.com/02CjKEtMSg
— Jack Ankony (@ankony_jack) February 7, 2024
Galloway is no stranger to injuries. He has dealt with them throughout his college career after joining the Hoosiers for the 2020-21 season under former head coach Archie Miller. Through all of that, Galloway has progressively taken on a larger role each season, peaking at a career-high 33.4 minutes per game in 2023-24.
After averaging 10.6 points and 4.6 assists per game last season, Galloway is an important piece for coach Mike Woodson as he looks to bring Indiana back to the NCAA Tournament for the third time in four seasons. And while Galloway wishes he could have practiced with his new teammates over the summer, the timing of the injury comes with a silver lining.
“I’ve dealt with it a lot. I’ve already missed a summer before with my groin. I've had definitely some tough blows, my wrist and stuff too, and now this, obviously,” Galloway said. “But it’s really challenging just because you want to be out there with your teammates. I’m lucky it’s now and I’m not missing games. But it still sucks to miss time, whenever it is.”
“But I think just in general, just knowing that I have a chance to be fully back to myself, that’s very positive and that makes me happy. I think just knowing that I’m going to be able to keep pushing through it and see myself in a couple months and look back and be like ‘Wow, that really wasn’t that bad.’ That will be very, just kind of eye-opening to me.”
Indiana went 19-14 overall and 10-10 in Big Ten play in Woodson’s third season, which meant no NCAA Tournament for the Hoosiers. They declined an NIT invite and got busy retooling a roster with six transfers – Myles Rice (Washington State), Oumar Ballo (Arizona), Kanaan Carlyle (Stanford), Luke Goode (Illinois), Langdon Hatton (Bellarmine) and Dallas James (South Carolina State) – and one freshman, five-star recruit Bryson Tucker.
On the podcast, Kopp asked Galloway what success would look like in his final season – in addition to the typical response of winning a Big Ten championship.
"I think success would be, looking in the big picture, just leaving a really good legacy at Indiana and going off on a really high note,” Galloway said. “Because that's the reason I came back, is to win and to be remembered as a winner. So I think leaving my legacy and leaving the program better than when I came into it. Because it was definitely – Indiana wasn't great when I committed."
"It's home, and there's nothing better than me trying to see Indiana at the top where it belongs. So obviously we've had a lot of ups and downs, but I think a success would be being remembered as a winner and going out as a winner in this final year would be huge."
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