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Quick Hitters: 10 key quotes from Indiana basketball head coach Darian DeVries introductory press conference

Taking a look at some of the key quotes from new Indiana basketball head coach Darian DeVries and Athletic Director Scott Dolson.

Published

3 days ago

March 19, 2025

Alec Lasley

Taking a look at some of the key quotes from new Indiana basketball head coach Darian DeVries and Athletic Director Scott Dolson. (Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

The Indiana basketball program officially introduced new head coach Darian DeVries on Wednesday morning.

DeVries spent one season at West Virginia after six years at Drake. DeVries, 49, has been to the NCAA tournament three times in his seven years as a head coach.

DeVries takes over the Indiana basketball program after the Mike Woodson era ended after four years.

Below are some of the key quotes that Athletic Director Scott Dolson and new head coach Darian DeVries had on Wednesday.

1. Strong Non-Conference Schedule

Darian DeVries: “The Big Ten conference play, we got 20 of those games, so you’ve got to get yourself ready for it, and we want to challenge ourselves in the best way possible to make sure we’ve got some very meaningful non-conference games. I know we have a couple already scheduled for this year. I think I’m allowed to say a couple of them. We have Kentucky scheduled, and I believe we have Marquette scheduled in Chicago. I believe those are the two that we have currently scheduled. So we’ll continue to work on building on that, as well, and we’d love to get another one or two really good high-quality games and then add that to the 20-game Big Ten schedule.

“You have to do a good job of — you’ve got to get your home games, as well, but also make sure we do a great job of getting ourselves ready for Big Ten play and challenging ourselves before we start that.”

2. Recruiting high School vs college and the transfer portal

Darian DeVries: “Yeah, certainly everything has changed from five, ten years ago in terms of high school recruiting, the portal and things. In our ideal world we would build it from the high school up. This first year, that’s not possible. We’re going to have to fill some holes in the roster through the portal, and then your hope is in each year, you might lose a guy or two. Your hope is they love it here so much that nobody ever wants to leave here, and then you replace a few guys from the portal, continue to build through the high school, hopefully as a sophomore. Then you can keep two or three high school kids and get two or three freshmen, and now over the course of time you’re going to be able to build some consistency within your roster.

“The last thing you want to do is every year come in and have to sign 10, 11 new guys. That’s just hard to make it function. The first year you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to get a roster put together, and then we build from there. Hopefully that retention is as close to 100 percent as we can because, like we said, they just love it here, they enjoy it, we’ve got the resources for them to stay here. Now you can build consistency, and that’s ultimately what you want to get to.”

3. Building a true ‘team’

Darian DeVries: “I think the biggest thing and where you can get yourself in trouble is you’re not building a collection of players. You have to build a team, and a team has to be able to fit together, play together, win together, be able to function together. That’s the number one thing, and I’ve had to do it now several times because basketball has changed. College athletics has changed. We’ve had multiple times now as a head coach we’ve had to sign nine, ten guys in a given season.

“So I think it’s critical that you make sure that every player’s motivation is the right motivation for why they want to be a part of your program. If their motivations are right and you get enough of those individuals with those same type of aspirations, now you have a chance to put a team together; you have a chance to win together.”

4. The history of Indiana basketball

Darian DeVries: “I think you embrace everything about the past. That’s awesome. Our history is our history, and it’s a great history. Why would we not want to embrace that?

“Now my job is what the future looks like, and that’s what we want to do is we want to be a part of that history and be a positive part of that history. That for us is, like all former players and alumni from here, yeah, we want to embrace them. That’s awesome. This is their program. They built this thing. We want to be a big part of that as we move forward. That’s our goal.”

5. “A dream job for anyone”

Darian DeVries: “The opportunity came along to possibly be the head coach at Indiana, a dream job for anyone, but especially for someone that grew up in the Midwest watching the old Big 8 and Big 10 basketball.

“The chance to lead one of the biggest brands in college basketball was something that I could not pass up.”

6. Process oriented

Darian DeVries: “We’re going to really focus on every day the process of what does it take to win games. If at the end of the day we’re really good at that, those things will happen. But that’s our single priority is very narrow focused on being elite at all those little things.

“The wins and losses, they’re going to work themselves out because if you can do all those things the way you need to do them and the way I believe we can do that, then the wins are going to come.”

7. Resources don’t win games

Darian DeVries: “Everything is in place here for us to have the opportunity to win and to win at a high level. Now our job is to make that happen … Resources certainly are a huge part of giving you those opportunities, but resources do not win games. We want to be a very process-oriented program with a core fabric built around that work. The people we surround ourselves with and the players that have a desire to want to be a part of something special.

“We want to build something that is sustainable for a long period of time, and we will do that by staying true to what this program is about.”

8. Expectations and standards

Darian DeVries: “The process is the process. Your standards are your standards. Make sure that when we go out that we’re not making exceptions to what we believe is important. When you have to sign nine, ten guys, it’s easy to go like, oh, let’s just give in for this particular one, and we’re just not going to do that.

“I know our staff, sometimes we get frustrated with, like, hey, we got this kid, we can get here, here’s a few of the red flags, and we’re out. We just really believe that locker room is critical because you cannot survive without a good locker room.”

9. His blueprint

Scott Dolson: “The first thing is he’s won consistently and he’s got a blueprint that fits here. It was evident in talking to him and learning more about him. His winning, he’s done it quickly. His winning at Drake, for example — and I think this has been well documented, but prior to his arrival, Drake had five 20-win seasons in their history. He was there for six years and had six 20-win seasons and immediately got that going. They had had one NCAA tournament appearance in the last 47 years. He went there three times in six years.

“Those things are really important, the quick turnaround to understand how to build a program … at West Virginia he took a nine-win team and took that to a 19-win team despite losing two key players to injury early in the season. Was super impressive.”

10. The modern game of basketball

Scott Dolson: “We wanted to make certain that we had someone that really understands and really equally importantly has embraced modern roster construction. That’s huge. A proven evaluator and developer of players. We wanted to make certain that we had a modern playing style. We have to have a head coach that understands where things are going.

Darian DeVries: “I think it’s critical for us as you’re building out a roster, and this year as — this past year at West Virginia as we took over a roster, there’s only one player that returned from the previous year. So we put a roster together that we felt could fit and make the pieces fit as best we could during that spring signing period.

“I think it’s critical in how we want to play because in the ideal world on a missed shot, turnovers, we would like to score in those first 12 seconds. That’s how we played. I was an assistant coach at Creighton University for a long time under Greg McDermott. Took that offensive philosophy with me to Drake, and then to West Virginia. We feel like the best way to score is on a broken floor before the defense is set, so that’s our main priority from an offensive standpoint. Then if you don’t score in those first 12 seconds, now we want to get the best shot available, whenever that may come.

“But overall, shooting is a critical piece. We’re in a pretty decent spot. We lost a couple of our better shooters to injury this year so it did impact a little bit of our overall shooting for the season, but as we move forward and build a roster and roster construction, we want plenty of depth in the shooting areas because I think you can’t win if you don’t make shots. That’s a huge priority for us.”