BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Jeremiah Rivers sat down at his locker recently and stared at a page from a preseason basketball publication.

It was a list of transfers expected to make an impact this season.

Rivers, who played two seasons at Georgetown and was considered a defensive stopper on a Final Four team, was not mentioned.

He quickly filed the snub in his memory bank.

“It is motivation,” he said. “You’re thinking ‘OK, you’ll see.’ That’s how I look at it. But I’m too focused and I’ve worked too hard to let anything negative affect me or my team.”

Rivers, son of Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers, practiced with IU every day last year but had to watch his young teammates go through the growing pains of a 6-25 season.

That was tough for a kid who was 58-13 at Georgetown the previous two years.

“Because I was with these guys for everything except the games last year, they really made me feel like I was a part of the team,” Rivers said. “So I felt the same pain, and the discomfort and the embarrassment of giving everything we had, but we just couldn’t pull it out.”

Coach Tom Crean expects the 6-5 junior point guard to be a key part of the solution this season.

Crean visualizes a more open offense, more flow, fewer set plays than last season. All of which plays to Rivers’ strengths.

“His body is different and that allows him to do so many different things,” Crean said. “He’s really good for us on the break. We want him to explode through defenses and try to make it very, very hard for them to set up. . . . This team is going to play more off of concepts, things of that nature.”

Rivers left Georgetown, in part, because he felt like a robot who “had no idea how to play anymore.” Rivers said the Hoyas ran the same sets out of their structured Princeton offense that relied on post feeds and backdoor cuts.

“This offense is so much better because I’m not going out there and worrying about going to a specific spot or running the exact same play three or four times in a row,” Rivers said. “This offense just allows you to go and play, and it’s a lot of fun.”

It’s more fun with a talented incoming freshman class, too.

“It has jumped quite a notch,” Rivers said. "Last year you could get to the basket and the defense would be a half-second late. Now you get to the basket and the defense is there waiting on you. And it’s just because they can make that extra step that the defense couldn’t make last year. Offensively, we’re quicker and better shooters.

“It’s fun and it’s challenging. It kind of reminds me of our teams back at Georgetown.”

At Georgetown, Rivers averaged 2.5 points in 18.6 minutes as a sophomore.

He expects those numbers to rise considerably this season.

“I think people will be like, ‘Wow, we haven’t seen this or we weren’t expecting this,’ and that’s fine,” said Rivers, who added that he was a 25-point scorer in AAU. "Honestly, though, I’m not going into the season looking to surprise anyone.

“I’m going into the season looking to win. You guys can call me the best defender or the best scorer or whatever, as long as at the end of the day we have a ‘W’ to show for it.”