Stats, Rankings for Indiana Basketball's Aleksa Ristic in FIBA U20 EuroBasket

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- After seven games in nine days at the FIBA Under-20 EuroBasket, rising freshman guard Aleksa Ristic's next time on the hardwood will come at an Indiana men's basketball practice.

Ristic and the Serbian National Team won their first five games in Greece but lost 85-78 to Italy on Saturday in the semi-finals and fell 73-62 to France in the third-place game Sunday.

For the tournament, Ristic ranked 32nd in scoring with an average of 11.3 points per game, and he finished fourth in assists with 6.3 per game. Both averages took a hit Sunday, as Ristic posted tournament-lows with six points and two assists.

Ristic struggled with efficiency. He shot only 33.8% from the floor, which placed 35th out of 45 qualified players, and his 22.5% mark from 3-point range was outside the top 50 qualified shooters.

The 19-year-old Ristic played 224 minutes total, the most in the tournament, and he was the only player who averaged greater than 32 minutes per game. He tied with Purdue signee Omer Mayer for the fourth-best free throw percentage at 85.7% -- both players hit 18 of 21 attempts at the foul stripe.

Perhaps most relevant to Ristic's future as a ball handler in Indiana's offense, he had an impressive 44 assists to just 17 turnovers, a 2.6 assist-to-turnover ratio.

Indiana head coach Darian DeVries believes Ristic has the skill set to play both point and shooting guard in the Hoosiers' offense, and Ristic showed glimpses of both dimensions in Greece.

"Aleksa is a versatile guard that can play on and off the ball," DeVries said in a statement earlier this month. "He is a competitive kid that has high-level experience playing in FIBA events. We think he has the ability to handle the basketball and make plays out of the pick-and-roll while also being an efficient shooter that will add tremendous depth to our backcourt."

Ristic will get two weeks of practice in Bloomington before the Hoosiers' three-game international series Aug. 5-12 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.