BLOOMINGTON – Scott Heady nodded, smiling, as he began to analyze the transition offense that’s now scored 49 points in its past three halves of basketball.

Heady’s Marian team had just finished a 94-61 exhibition loss to Indiana, in a repeat of these teams’ preseason meeting a year ago. That team was built around a player who didn’t see the floor that day, Trayce Jackson-Davis sidelined by an injury but nevertheless the Hoosiers’ clear north star.

Friday night, Heady had to contend with a team still figuring out its alphas and its roles and its strengths and its weaknesses. But his Knights got a steady dose of the length, athleticism and, yes, breakneck fastbreak offense it seems will underpin what success the Hoosiers have this winter.

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“They really get it out and go,” Heady said. “We were sending two and three guys back on the shot, and we were still getting beat down the floor. They just get it out and run, and attack.

“When they get their defense active and they get running, and they’re hitting shots like they were in the second half, they can be pretty darn good.”

Five Hoosiers scored in double figures in the second of their two preseason games, this one a more complete team performance than the win over UIndy last Sunday.

IU’s offense clicked from the tip and never stopped humming, the Hoosiers scoring 45-plus in each half and averaging 1.47 points per possession. Indiana turned the ball over just twice to Marian’s 15 giveaways, the Knights averaging just 0.88 PPP. That number would’ve been lower but for nine first-half 3-pointers from the visitors, a failing rectified when Marian shot just 2-of-16 from 3 in the latter 20 minutes.

“I thought they picked up their defense a little bit in the second half,” Heady said. “Last week, when they played UIndy, they did the same thing. When they came out in the second half, they had a little more intensity.”

Heady acknowledged, understandably, the expected gap in qualities like athleticism and reach between the Hoosiers and their NAIA visitors.

But Marian is no slouch at that level, having led the Knights to the NAIA tournament in each of his six seasons in charge. And he’ll have known Indiana well conceptually, at least, having prepared for the same opponent a year ago.

The Hoosiers aren’t the same opponent they were a year ago. In some ways better, in some ways worse, IU is in any case a dramatically different team than it was the last time Heady drew up his game plan.

No player embodied that turnover better than the one tasked with replacing — at least positionally — Indiana’s All-American in the post.

Kel’el Ware isn’t Trayce Jackson-Davis, and no one will ask him to be. Mike Woodson makes no secret of the fact his Jackson-Davis offense was not his preferred style, and that it isn’t necessarily what he’ll lean on going forward.

Woodson wants athleticism, versatility and disruptive length. Ware, 7-2 with prodigious reach, gives him all three. The Oregon transfer led all players Friday with 20 points and 11 rebounds. He hit baseline jumpers and a 3-pointer. His length deterred a Marian team that attempted just 10 layups and no dunks.

The tests will be tougher when the competition stiffens. But there are elements of Ware’s profile that will play anywhere, against anyone.

“Man he is long, gosh,” Heady said. “He’s really long and really athletic, very versatile. He got going. I don’t know what he had in the second half, but it seems like that first 10 minutes, he got going pretty good.

“He doesn’t force it. He just kind of lets the game come to him, but he’s definitely a tough matchup for our guys.”

For both Marian and Indiana, the games will mean more when they count. The Hoosiers get Florida Gulf Coast to open the regular season Tuesday, and they won’t have to wait three weeks to face UConn (plus one) at Madison Square Garden in New York.

There will be plenty of moments when this team looks like a work in progress, as it certainly did in patches of these two exhibitions. Even as they polish their rough edges, it’s easy to see why opposing coaches’ eyes get wide talking about their potential.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.