IU Indy men’s and women’s basketball grad transfers adjust to new environment

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Photo courtesy of IU Indianapolis Athletics

Alec Millender hails from Chicago and Kendall Wingler grew up on a farm in Kentucky, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have anything in common.

Both started their college basketball careers during the first full school year after the world shut down for COVID-19. It was a confusing time, what with everybody still feeling out new rules and behaviors.

Wingler recalls her high school graduation with a laugh: “Everybody got in the back of their pickup trucks and rode around the county…It was like a drive through to picked your diploma. That was it.”

The sparse crowds in gyms and increased amounts of online classes that year did not stop either Millender or Wingler from immediately demonstrating their talents on the court. Millender started 16 of Wayne State College’s 18 games at point guard that season while shooting 44% from the 3-point line and 90% from the free throw line. He scored just under 11 points a game.

Wingler was just as productive at Eastern Kentucky; the shooting guard started 22 out of 24 games and also averaged in the ballpark of 11 points a game. She knocked down 6 three-pointers against Tennessee State and shot almost 83% from the foul line that season.

Now Millender and Wingler both have bachelor’s degrees as first-year team members at IU Indy.

For Millender, the change of scenery has been welcome. While he credits Division II Wayne State College with having “a great program,” he added, “I always felt like I was a Division I player.” Knowing he was about to graduate, “it was time” to make a change.

Millender, who lost his mother when he was in high school, was also looking for a place that would make it easier for his father, who still lives in Chicago, to attend his games. Then it was a matter of an historical connection with another IU Indy graduate transfer that led to the Jaguars’ becoming Millender’s next stop for his basketball goals and dreams.

Millender had played AAU ball with fellow Jags’ teammate Paul Zilinskas, who had also played his high school basketball in Illinois. The two stayed in touch as Zilinskas’ path took him first to Quincy University before landing at University of Indianapolis, where he played for Paul Corsaro, now in his first season as the men’s head coach at IU Indy after leading the Greyhounds to two straight NCAA Division II Tournament appearances. 

Zilinskas is currently the team’s leading scorer at just 18 points per outing and is one of 5 UIndy transfers that came over with Corsaro to play for the Jaguars, including two other graduate transfers in guard Jarvis Walker and the reserve 7-footer, Julian Steinfeld.

Once Millender decided upon IU Indianapolis as his transfer destination, it was assistant coach Tony Wills who helped him get connected to an appropriate housing situation—Millender lives in a house rental with three teammates—and assistant director of academic services Kim Kile who helped him get enrolled in masters classes for sports journalism.

Millender has been in the rotation from the jump for a Jaguars’ team that improved to 6-12  after its recent and welcome 95-61 home conference win against Detroit Mercy. The competitiveness of conference games has been a sign of encouragement for a program under new leadership; last year’s team went 6-26 and lost their final 12 games of the season.

Millender began the season coming off the bench but has since worked his way into the starting lineup while shooting 46% from the 3-point line.

There was at least one game this season that was a bit of an exception to Millender’s reliability, as he started against Eastern Michigan but only played 14 minutes while turning the ball over more times (2) than he scored or assisted in the game.

Millender acknowledges that the turnovers he committed early in that game—a 3-point loss for the Jaguars—didn’t help, but he also admits that it was really a defensive error that led to his spending more time than usual on the bench that night.  

“I had two fouls,” he explained. “But one of the fouls was because I wasn’t on the midline, and one of our principles on defense is to always be on the midline.”

The “mid-line” for the Jags is about help defense. When they’re practicing, there’s tape on the floor around the three-point line to help players know where they’re supposed to be.

So what is it about Millender’s character that allows him to bounce back from a low point like that, a tough game? He gives credit to the man who’s now driving to his games again. “My dad disciplined me at home. He brought us up on ‘Yes Sir, yes Ma’am.’”

On the women’s side, the team’s opener was hopeful, as the Jags won big over Evansville at home with Wingler—who is the only grad transfer on the women’s roster—playing starter minutes off the bench and contributing 9 points and 4 rebounds in the 25-point win.

Anyone who saw Wingler play that night may have noticed a few of her tattoos. That started, Wingler says with a smile, during her lone season at Eastern Kentucky, though she has since added to the arsenal a design she described as “Celtic tribal.” She gives credit to her father for helping her brainstorm about it and her tattoo artist for putting “her own twist on it.”

“My entire leg took maybe four hours,” Wingler says. ”Now that’s how people know me or how I leave an impression. People are like, ‘You played at Butler, I remember your tattoos.’”

Since the opening win at IU Indy, Wingler started a couple games, but hasn’t played since before Christmas due to a sore and inflamed knee. Her team, meanwhile, may be finding their stride: after a 1-11 start, they’ve won 3 of their last 5.

As Wingler waits out her injury, one thing she doesn’t do is daydream about going back home. Without the labor Wingler used to provide her father on the farm, he has since sold off some of the animals they used to have and went back to a more traditional mode of employment. Wingler says she loves animals, but caring for them is not what she wants to do professionally.

“I originally went to college in the middle of nowhere,” she says, “and I thought that’s what I wanted. Then I transferred to a city and found myself absolutely wanting to be in that at all times. Like not having to drive an hour to get to the closest grocery store or anything like that. I like going home, but it’s like, ‘This is not what I want for my life.’”

She sees herself on a path toward coaching, though she wonders if the sport she’ll pursue from that side of the equation might end up being one she previously left behind: soccer.

“I love running,” she says, before explaining that she chose basketball over soccer in high school because of how much time weekend tournaments took on the court. She likes both sports, but doing both just didn’t feel feasible.

She believes she still has the relationships from travel and recruiting from the past several years of her life to potentially find a graduate assistantship once she’s out of playing eligibility.

If Wingler’s transition to IU Indy—she’s taking classes in the same program as Millender—has led to some unexpected adversity, it has not caused her to question the decisions she made in order to get here.

 She has gone through four coaching staffs during her college basketball career and still says she “can take different things from everybody.”

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