Tucker DeVries is closest thing IU has to a returning player. How he'll help everyone else catch up
BLOOMINGTON – So much of the past four months has been familiar to Tucker DeVries, even through tremendous change.
This is his second straight year adjusting to a new program, following his father, Darian, from West Virginia to IU. It’s the second summer running he’s assumed the role not just of leader but guide, for teammates intensely less familiar with his father’s methods.
Even the Hoosiers’ forthcoming trip to Puerto Rico is habit by now — this is the third summer running Darian DeVries has taken his team on a foreign tour.
“The biggest thing is just spending time together,” Tucker said Wednesday, of the importance of that trip. “That’s a full week of you're spending every minute together as a group. And usually when we come back in the fall from that trip — this is my third straight one — you can see a big difference in the chemistry.”
He knows it will be a requirement, for a team entirely new in Darian DeVries’ first season as head coach in Bloomington.
Tucker DeVries is the closest thing Indiana has to a returner from last season. He’s played for his father across the past four seasons, winning Missouri Valley Conference player of the year twice at Drake before following his dad to West Virginia.
He averaged nearly 15 points per game for the Mountaineers last winter, including 26 in a win against Arizona in the Battle 4 Atlantis, before a shoulder injury ended his season after just eight games.
Now, Tucker starts fresh one more time. He secured the necessary waiver for one more year of eligibility, and he figures to assume a prominent role in his father’s first season at Indiana.
“He definitely is a lead-by-example type guy. You always seen him in the gym,” said fifth-year guard Conor Enright, who played with Tucker at Drake. “He's always here early getting shots. I think he's just grown, and the fact that he's done this before, so he knows what he has to do again.”
That starts with starting. Tucker likely heads the queue for a place in his father’s first five on the floor, given everything.
More than that, his understanding of Darian DeVries’ offensive and defensive philosophies places him at the heart of what can make his father’s first season in Bloomington successful.
At an open practice Wednesday, Tucker was among the most involved players, both with his words and his actions. He communicated with the ease of a player familiar with his team’s fundamentals and terminology. And he stayed in the action on the ball, both as a shooter and a creator.
As the summer has worn on, the younger DeVries has seen his new teammates rise to meet the same expectations he’s understood for years.
Puerto Rico, he knows, will be an important next step in pulling together the intangible qualities that build a winner. But his responsibility won’t end when IU leaves San Juan.
Tucker has done this before. He’s prepared to do it again, one more time.
“Trying to help guys, get in the right spots, and if they have a question and don't really feel like they want to go to a coach or they can always come to me and Conor and try and help them out the best,” Tucker said. “But they've done a great job of learning everything and picking up on it. And I give them props, because they work really hard at trying to understand what we're trying to do as a whole. And I think it's we've made tremendous strides in that.”
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