Season in review: Michael Durr

Syndication: The Herald-Times — Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK

Michael Durr, we barely knew you.

When he arrived in Bloomington, South Florida transfer Michael Durr was coming off of a junior season in which he was the third-leading scorer (but one of five players who averaged more than eight points but less than 10) for the eighth-place team in the American Athletic Conference and he joined an Indiana frontcourt that featured a second-team All-Big Ten selection (Trayce Jackson-Davis) and an honorable-mention pick (Race Thompson).

Likely due to the numbers game in terms of the limited minutes available for him in Indiana’s frontcourt, as well as because of the step up in competition, Durr was only able to carve out a role as the team’s second forward off the bench, one who averaged 7.1 minutes per game in 30 appearances. He averaged 1.5 points and 1.0 rebound per game, finishing with as many or more fouls than points in exactly half of the games he played.

Below are Durr’s per-game and advanced stats from his career, with the latter coming from kenpom.com.

Durr played at least 10 minutes in just six games and only twice in Big Ten play — 24 minutes in Indiana’s win over Purdue, when he finished with four points, two blocks and two steals, but not a single rebound, and he fouled out with two points and two rebounds in 12 minutes against Illinois. The Purdue game was the only time all season when he finished with an offensive rating above 100, per kenpom.com. His rating that game was 102.

While he was the fourth-most efficient player in AAC play during the 2021 season, per kenpom.com, Durr’s season-long offensive rating at Indiana was a sub-par 90 and it was merely average in Big Ten play at 105.5. Despite being listed at 7-feet and 250 pounds, he’s a career 48.5-percent 2-point shooter, whose average actually decreased year over year since his freshman season, down to 41.9 percent last season.

Given that Jackson-Davis and Thompson ranked first and second, respectively, in minutes per game last season, combining for just over 60 per game, there was likely always going to be little opportunity for Durr, but he put little pressure on the starters or the coaching staff for him to warrant more minutes.

Durr has since transferred to UCF, back to the AAC, where he was a player who averaged nearly nine points and eight rebounds per game two seasons ago, as one of the conference’s top rebounders and shot-blockers.

His lone season at Indiana could serve as a few worthy reminders: transfers, especially those who enroll at a school in a stronger conference compared to their previous school, are far from guaranteed to produce at the same level, let alone play regularly, and secondly, for a program searching for depth at a position with entrenched, veteran starters, it could be inherently harder for a school to recruit a top-flight backup at that position through the transfer portal, when players in the portal are often looking for more playing time and shots.