Pieces in Place
IUP's Dillard, Bautista look forward to exciting times ahead
Dallis Dillard can’t wait to pull his No. 5 IUP jersey over his head again.
Bautista Rodriguez can’t wait to put on No. 13 for the first time.
Both are important pieces of the IUP basketball puzzle going into next season.
They were this season, too, even though they spent game nights on the bench watching the present and gazing into the future.
Dillard wasn’t ready physically to return in December, 10 months after major knee surgery, and decided to sit out the season and preserve his final year of guaranteed eligibility.
Bautista — from this point, the Argentinian will be called only by his first name, like a South American soccer star — ran into an NCAA eligibility issue regarding international players and wasn’t permitted to play.
“I’m definitely excited for next season,” he said. “I can’t wait to put on the IUP shirt and jump to the court. It seems like it’s just around the corner, but it’s a few months until next season, and it gives us time to keep working on individual stuff and as a team. But I’m just excited thinking about the future and what we can do next year.”
IUP returns all eight regulars from this year’s rotation and adds instant starters in Dillard and Bautista. The Crimson Hawks finished 14-16 with three freshmen among six new players in the lineup. Coach Joe Lombardi said he plans to sign two players, including a taller post player to address one of the Hawks’ needs.
“There’s no way you can tell me this team is not going to be a really good team,” Dillard said. “They faced so many storms already, and adding more leaders and more guys is going to help them face the storm. I don’t see any way we can’t get out of that storm now. It’s going to be exciting.”
By the time next season rolls around, it will have been 28 months since Dillard last wore a game jersey. He was a key piece of the puzzle from the moment he was summoned from the redshirt list as a true freshman on the 2021-22 team that won conference and regional championships and played in the national semifinals. As a sophomore, he filled the same role on a conference championship team and regional finalist.
He was on schedule for a breakout season as a junior in 2023-24 and formed a dynamic trio along with Ethan Porterfield and Garvin Clarke, but he blew out his knee 10 games into the season. IUP never replaced the production on either end of the court and labored to a 17-11 finish.
Dillard, a 6-foot-3 guard from Harlem, N.Y., was part of teams that finished 33-3 and 32-2 in his first two seasons. The past two teams didn’t reach that total combined. He expects the Hawks to get back on track next year.
“Last year was my team, in a sense, but this year was really my team,” he said. “And I’m proud of what we did. I don’t think our record reflects how great a journey we had and how much growth we had since August. I’m proud to say this is my group, and next year it will still be my group. We return the whole team basically for the first time in two years, and that’s going to contribute to us putting another banner up there, so I’m excited about that.”
Dillard is a proven commodity. He was averaging 15.8 points and 6.2 rebounds and emerging as one of the top two-way guards in the region when he was injured while making a play on defense. He practiced with the team this season and spent game nights as an extra assistant coach.
“He knows what a championship team looks like, what the qualities of championship DNA are,” Lombardi said. “He’s developed into a mature young man with a great heart, and he has the potential to be one of the best leaders we’ve had here. He’s going to bring an all-league-type player with basketball ability, and his biggest role might be his leadership and ability to elevate other guys – their mindsets as well as physical game. It’s like having another coach on the floor because of his knowledge of the game.”
“He’s been in the program for a long time and was like an assistant coach this year,” Bautista said. “We can say this is a player who’s going to take a lot of shots and play big minutes and brings pretty much everything to the court, and he’s a leader. He’s a scorer, plays defense. He talks. He has a great IQ, and he is also a really good leader off the court. He takes care of the freshmen and younger guys and is always teaching us things about basketball and about life. He’s the leader every team wants to have.”
Bautista, a sturdily built 6-6 forward, practiced with the team throughout the season. He turns 21 next month after delaying his high school graduation in Argentina to play in a junior national program in Spain, and that was one of the factors in a complicated eligibility issue that wasn’t settled until after the season started. The NCAA ruled he could not play, and he lost a year of eligibility, so he will be a true sophomore next year.
“Bautista is another guy with a lot of experience,” Lombardi said. “He’s a little bit older and played on the international scene, so he’s played high-level competition and just brings a physical presence and aggressiveness that will greatly add to our team and level of maturity. And he has the attitude that he can play a lot of roles, but his main focus is to be great at the role the team gives him.
“And both guys are two of the better defenders we had out on the court, so automatically we’ll be better defensively. Offensively, it’s always an unknown, but I think they’ll really improve us and enhance us on that end of the floor, too.”
Like Dillard, Bautista is healthy after coming off surgery. He had procedures on both hips to repair damaged labrums and knee surgery to repair a meniscus.
“I’m pretty much like Dallis and live in the training room,” he said with a smile.
“He’s just a great teammate,” Dillard said, “and he’s striving every day to be a leader, which isn’t easy as a freshman, but he has a mature approach I didn’t have as a freshman. Granted, he’s a little older, and he played at high levels, and that just contributes to that approach, and he’s going to be a great guy to have.”
Dillard decided to redshirt in December rather than return below par physically at 60-65 percent.
Now he’s ready to go full bore as a redshirt senior, and after next season, he can petition the NCAA for one more year of eligibility.
“I feel better than I did before offensively,” he said. “I play more methodically rather than with just the athleticism I did when I was younger. And defensively, either you have it or you don’t, and I’m still that dog I was when I was 18 and 19. I’m excited to show people nothing has changed.”
They have a chance to be really good.
I'm really looking forward to the 2025-26 season. With the players returning plus Bautista and Dillard back and a few new additions, they should be a very competitive team.