According to his Twitter, PG Austin Van Zyl has received an offer from the Indiana University program. Van Zyl spent the last two years overseas with the AS Monaco “Espoirs” basketball club, which is the under-21 division of the French soccer and basketball organization. Austin Van Zyl was born in Canada but holds South African citizenship. The Hoosiers would add him to the class of 2019, using one of their two open scholarships.
Van Zyl told IndianaHQ that he “loves the culture” of the Indiana basketball program.
Earlier this June, a number of reports stated that Indiana University was keeping in regular contact with Austin Van Zyl; however, at the time he had not yet been offered by the IU staff. Others schools mentioned to have communication with Van Zyl include Stanford, St. Johns, UCLA, and Cincinnati.
Today’s announcement may also signal that the university has done their necessary due diligence in determining if Austin Van Zyl has truly maintained NCAA-eligibility. It is very uncommon to see players that have played overseas return back to college – mostly because they players in those leagues have received monetary benefits, nullifying their NCAA eligibility.
While we are still waiting on the word if and when he will take visits to colleges, Indiana is certainly an option to make it to the list of schools Austin wants to visit. The recruitment of Austin Van Zyl may pick up more steam once an official visit is scheduled, and ultimately taken. Time will tell if that happens this summer or not.
From a scout’s take, Austin Van Zyl has an interesting physical build that could make him very useful at the college level. You rarely find 6-foot-5 guards, let alone point guards. Indiana, given it’s current roster construction, could use additional depth at the pure point guard position.
With the departures of Romeo Langford and Juwan Morgan, Indiana will be looking for additional scoring options. Shooters, drivers, post-players: The Hoosiers need anyone and everyone that can get balls into buckets. If Austin Van Zyl can potentially showcase his ability to shoot and drive to the Indiana staff, this recruitment could get very interesting. As it stands, Van Zyl shot just 26.4% from behind the arc in his 26 games with AS Monaco over the last two years.
