Cody Zeller has gained the trust of his team with his humility and dedication to improvement.

“Cody Zeller epitomizes so many things about the program, and No. 1 is the humble spirit he has,” Indiana coach Tom Crean said. “He’s confident but he has a humbleness, and he has a desire to improve.

“When your best players lead the way with improvement in your team then you have an opportunity to keep getting better. There is no room for taking a seat in the back or for taking a day off for anybody else in the program when your best players work that way. He continues to improve. He’s got a lot of things that he can get better at, he knows it, we know it and if those improvements continue we can do a lot of things with him.”

Zeller led the Hoosiers in scoring (15.6), shooting percentage (62.3) rebounding (6.6), blocks (1.2) and steals (1.3) last season.

“Without him, everybody knows and everybody’s not afraid to say it, without him, we wouldn’t have won last year,” Hoosiers guard Victor Oladipo said. “He’s the best big man in the country.

“He’s a humble guy. He’s a rare species. People like him don’t come around every day. He’s gotten a lot stronger, too.”