Why Darian DeVries is the guy to return Indiana to the top
- Confused by IU basketball's rush to hire Darian DeVries from West Virginia? You weren't alone. But look deeper. The more you study DeVries, the more you realize: He'll get it done at Indiana.
- DeVries won immediately at Drake and West Virginia, two places where the time or place – or both – wasn’t conducive to winning. His career record in seven seasons: 169-68.
- DeVries will surely bring his son, 6-7 guard Tucker DeVries, a two-time MVC player of the year who played just eight games at West Virginia – where his dad proved, again, he can win without his son.
The Indiana basketball program has hired West Virginia’s Darian DeVries as coach, and I love it. Could I love it more? Yes, but only if DeVries changed the way he spelled his last name. What would look better? S-t-e-v-e-n-s. But Brad Stevens wasn’t coming to save IU basketball. Which means IU athletic director Scott Dolson needed another superhero.
And Darian DeVries looks great in a cape.
Would DeVries look even better in the 2025 NCAA Tournament? Well, sure. The vaunted Indiana Hoosiers just hired a coach who didn’t reach the NCAA Tournament, and that looks weird. And they rushed to hire that coach, because the NCAA Tourney hadn’t begun — not even the First Four, which isn’t the NCAA Tourney at all — before Dolson panicked and hired a coach and it’s just so weird, isn’t it?
Weird is good in this case, because weird makes you take a closer look at Darian DeVries. And unlike its last two hires, IU clearly took a closer look before making this one.
Know who wasn’t a weird hire? Mike Woodson wasn’t weird. Not for Indiana four years ago. He was older, sure, but still just 63. He was an IU alum, a legend who played for Bob Knight. He was from the biggest city in Indiana. He had NBA head coaching experience. The Hoosiers had tried to go outside the Knight family with its last three hires, from Kelvin Sampson to Tom Crean to Archie Miller, and it hadn’t worked. Once and for all, the school — and Dolson, making his first men’s basketball hire with help from two meddlesome boosters — went for an alumnus. Didn’t work, but it wasn’t weird.
Know who else wasn’t a weird hire? Archie Miller. That guy was a home-run hire in 2017, and not just a home run — but a grand slam into the upper deck. That, actually, was what I wrote the day then-Indiana AD Fred Glass announced the hiring of Miller — comparing the move to a tape-measure tater — because what was weird about hiring Archie Miller? Perfect pedigree, as the son of a Pennsylvania high school coaching legend and the brother of Arizona’s legend-in-the-making, Sean Miller. Won huge at Dayton, where everyone wins huge, but never mind that. This was an easy hire.
Darian DeVries wasn’t easy. Not unless you looked carefully.
Look carefully, IU fans, and here’s what you’ll find:
Darian DeVries has won big at schools where the time or place — or both — wasn’t conducive to winning big.
What’s he going to do, now that he’s finally at a school where the time and place — both — are right for a return to the top?
You like IU basketball hire of Darian DeVries?
First glance, I was like some of you: didn't understand this hire. Was on the phone with my best friend, who happens to be a basketball expert, and was telling her: This is a weird hire. Darian DeVries? All I know about that guy are two things:
One, he’s been winning because his son plays for him, and his son is the best player on the court.
Two, even with his son, he didn’t win enough at West Virginia this season to get the Mountaineers into the NCAA Tournament.
And this is who IU hired? Before the NCAA tourney even began, before more sensible targets — better coaches — started becoming available after their team lost? Thinking here about Drake’s Ben McCollum or Iowa State’s T.J. Otzelberger or, who knows, Texas A&M’s Buzz Williams.
Speaking of Ben McCollum…
Now there’s a guy who can win at Drake without having the best player on roster. Or any player on roster, really. McCollum replaced DeVries last season, after DeVries went to West Virginia and took with him his son — 6-foot-7 guard Tucker DeVries, the two-time Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year — and pretty soon almost everyone on that 28-7 Drake team was in the transfer portal.
McCollum comes in, starts over, brings in a ton of players from his last stop at Division II Northwest Missouri State, and goes 30-3. Drake’s in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, by the way, and if it matters, my company bracket has Drake reaching the Final Four. Because Ben McCollum looks that good.
Did Scott Dolson get confused and hire the wrong guy from Drake? That was my first, cynical thought. Then came this: Tucker DeVries better have another three years of eligibility, or Daddy’s going to have a rough time in Bloomington.
Look, just being honest here — and assuming those were the thoughts of a lot of IU basketball fans, too. Because if you were like me, you thought this hire was weird.
Turns out…
DeVries won big and fast at Drake, West Virginia
First things first: Indiana outflanked Iowa for DeVries.
Why would IU need to outflank anyone for a hire as weird as Darian DeVries? Bear with me. And this hire wasn’t weird at all. Stop calling it that! The Hoosiers nailed this hire, and people who know, know. The people at Iowa? They know. DeVries was at Drake for six seasons, from 2018-24. You think Iowa didn’t know plenty about Darian DeVries?
Iowa knew plenty, and knew it had to act fast to get him. Once Selection Sunday unfolded the way it did, with West Virginia being left out of the bracket in favor of an inferior North Carolina team — probably a coincidence that the chairman of the selection committee is UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham — that meant DeVries was available, immediately, for interested schools.
And schools would be interested in DeVries. Why? Well, first: West Virginia should’ve made the NCAA Tournament. The Mountaineers were snubbed by a selection committee that lacked the courage, the integrity, to tell the AD at North Carolina: “Sorry, but while you were out of the room, we discussed it and decided your team wasn’t worthy.”
Does that make DeVries a more palatable hire, the fact that his 2024-25 West Virginia team — record: 19-13 — deserved a spot in the 2025 bracket?
This should help:
The record of the 2023-24 West Virginia team, the year before DeVries arrived: 9-23.
Now then, let’s do like IU athletic director Scott Dolson and look even harder. Dolson looked hard, and he looked fast, because he hired DeVries before Iowa could do it.
Now it’s our turn to look at DeVries, so let’s go back to Drake, OK? Go way back, before DeVries became the Bulldogs’ coach in 2018.
When DeVries arrived, Drake had gone 10 years since its last NCAA Tournament appearance. And never mind the NCAA tourney — let’s talk about the MVC Tournament. Before DeVries arrived, Drake had been relegated to the Valley’s play-in game nine consecutive years from 2009-17. That streak was broken in 2018 by first-year Drake coach Niko Medved, who went 17-17 and was considered such a genius for breaking even at Drake that Colorado State hired him.
Enter Darian DeVries, a longtime assistant at Creighton under Dana Altman and Greg McDermott. He took the job at Drake, where winning was impossible, and won 24 games that first season. Then he won 20, 26, 25, 27 and 28 games.
You know what that means? It means he turned around Drake in one season without his son, then won 26 games the next season without his son. Tucker DeVries was on those final three teams — when Drake won 80 games from 2022-24 — and was, of course, on his dad’s first team at West Virginia.
Something else you might not know, and by "you," I mean me until earlier Tuesday: Tucker DeVries played just eight games this season for West Virginia. He suffered a shoulder injury in December. He will apply for a medical redshirt, and surely follow his dad to Bloomington with one more year of eligibility.
Know what that means? It means Darian DeVries turned around West Virginia — 9-23 the year before, remember — despite getting just eight games from his best player.
You understanding what is happening here? IU just hired a coach who won at Drake like he was at the best job in the conference — say, Creighton — and then won big enough at West Virginia to belong in the 2025 NCAA bracket despite inheriting a program that had gone 9-23 the previous season, and a combined 44-55 the previous three seasons.
But Darian DeVries goes there and posts an immediate 10-win improvement, six years after going to Drake and posting an immediate seven-win improvement.
What’s DeVries going to do at Indiana, where the NIL money is good and the winning ought to be great? You know what he’s going to do — and he’s just 49 years old. Indiana basketball just hired the coach who will bring this program back to prominence, and he’ll be here a long, long time.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads, or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.