BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — For the last full week of June, the thespians have taken over. A balloon-ringed installation in the Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall atrium declares “THEATRE MATTERS.” The touch screens on the lobby walls tease theater — beg pardon, theatre — trivia. Downstairs on the arena floor, dozens of blue tablecloths with yellow napkins are parked in front of a prodigious stage. This serves as a nerve center for the International Thespian Festival. Five college basketball national championship banners hang somewhere behind it.
A French Revolution comedy performed by high school actors from Dubuque, Iowa, and a graphic on the overhead scoreboard showing 10 pros who once wore the cream and crimson, impressing the idea of legacy on a visiting recruit. All in one space, and only at Indiana, sort of. Not everywhere has history worth chasing down in the first place. And, anyway, replica banners are plainly visible in the practice facility.
Over there, in a 67,000-square-foot building that’s hardly bereft, staring at evidence of a national title drought four decades long, Darian DeVries works on reintroducing college basketball to a place that should be on good terms with it.
Indiana’s previous stab at reinvention involved hiring a program legend who had only coached in the NBA and who generally ran things too much like someone who had only coached in the NBA. The Mike Woodson disconnect produced one win in the NCAA Tournament First Four and one in the field of 68 in four years. So, for the first time in the Name, Image and Likeness era of the sport, a seminal program looked beyond the family for help. In came the outsider. DeVries’ only relationship with Indiana hoops were games he saw on television while growing up in Iowa. And the only way he knows how to run a program is the way he ran one at Drake and then West Virginia, winning 71 percent of the time. So that’s what the 31st coach in Indiana history is doing now, from glad-handing at golf scrambles to calling out a lack of cheering in practice drills to installing a system predicated on pace and shooting.
It really shouldn’t be notable that two days of weekday summer workouts at Indiana resemble those at many other schools. Yet here the Hoosiers are. Resembling a modern college basketball program is, at least, a first step toward ending this decades-long wandering.
“The habits and the things that we pride ourselves on every day,” says forward Tucker DeVries, who has played for his father at all three stops, “it’s pretty much the same.”
What Indiana aspires to be, men’s basketball-wise, is clear. Only 10 programs have more wins all-time. Only four claim more national championships. “If you know basketball in America,” says transfer guard Lamar Wilkerson, an Arkansas native who spent his previous four years at Sam Houston State, “you know IU.”
So a trip to the Final Four for the first time since 2002 would be nice. Making room next to the banner from 1987’s title, at some point, would be fantastic.
What Indiana is, currently? That’s a puzzler.
It’s still one of the few basketball schools left, and what’s believed to be an NIL budget of $10 million for men’s hoops underlines that. The homepage for the Hoosiers Connect collective exhorts “Hoosiers Nation” to contribute to a pool — the goal is $100,000 — that is “directly earmarked to men’s basketball.” Indiana is also a member of a Big Ten Conference that swoons over football, and the Hoosiers have a suddenly ascendant gridiron program that appeared in the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff. Who gets what, from the NIL kitty and the new $20 million revenue-share pot resulting from House v. NCAA, is a complicated exercise, period. Here it’s made even more ticklish by basketball no longer being the only essential mouth to feed.
Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson told the Indianapolis Star in June that the school will “keep it simple.” “We, like most schools right now, have followed the revenue sports,” Dolson said. “It lines up with football getting the biggest share, and then men’s basketball, women’s basketball and volleyball would get the majority of the (remaining) money.”
This is college athletics in 2025. It’s also emblematic of the size and scope of this already gargantuan task. It will not be enough for Darian DeVries to develop talent and then scheme it up the best. It will not be enough for Darian DeVries to offer the shiniest piles of gold. It will not be enough for Darian DeVries to deftly tend to the various influential stakeholders in one of the most accomplished programs in the country.
It will only be enough to do all of it, and that’s only enough if the result is more success than Indiana has achieved for the longest time. The seventh head coach in this century alone — can’t say they’re not trying — finds himself trying to make a very big thing small. “Whether I was an assistant at Creighton or head coach at Drake or West Virginia or here, it’s still like, focus on what you know is important,” Darian DeVries says. “And that’s putting in the work. I mean, ultimately that’s going to determine your success or lack of. If you don’t put in the work, it’s not going to happen.”
In as much as anyone gets the benefit of the doubt at a place like this, DeVries earned some through going 169-68 at Drake and West Virginia, with what likely would’ve been three straight NCAA Tournament appearances across stops were it not for a shoulder injury to his son, Tucker, one of his two best players during the one year in Morgantown. (And the governor of the Mountain State had some feelings about that 2025 snub.) DeVries’ 2023-24 team at Drake nailed the blueprint: top 40 nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, top 25 in effective field goal percentage, top 15 in turnover rate. Last year’s West Virginia team, meanwhile, adapted to its personnel issues and finished 15th in adjusted defensive efficiency. The 50-year-old has done a good job being a college basketball coach so far.
Perhaps fittingly for a guy from Aplington, Iowa (pop. 1,116), who had a solid but not superlative four-year career at Northern Iowa, it all seems to be the residue of an unadorned approach. The suit DeVries wore to his introductory news conference at Indiana still had a dry cleaner’s tag on it, because he hadn’t worn it since his unveiling at West Virginia. There are no gimmicky slogans freshly painted on the walls of the practice gym. Three months into the job, one framed family picture sits on an office shelf behind DeVries’ desk.
“There’s not much else to it,” says Creighton coach Greg McDermott, who had DeVries on staff as an assistant for eight years. “He likes to hang with his family and play a little golf once in a while. And certainly he’ll do the necessary things to connect with the people he needs to connect with at Indiana. But he’s in his happy spot when he’s doing his job and he’s got his head down, trying to figure out ways to win games.”
There’s a leap of faith inherent to any regime change. It becomes something like jumping a motorcycle across a ravine when examining how DeVries and his staff built out an entirely new roster. Tucker DeVries, a career 17.7 points per game scorer with All-Big Ten potential at least, was the guaranteed high-profile get. He wound up being the only one. Of the other incoming transfers, two played at power conference schools in 2024-25, and neither scored in double figures. The rest came from the mid- to low-major ranks. Many made an impact — Wilkerson, for example, averaged 20.5 points at Sam Houston State — but they all needed name tags. There is positional size but also no one taller than 6-foot-10 Davidson transfer Reed Bailey.
The jaded, exhausted Indiana fan might juxtapose the NIL pool against this relatively low-profile group and wonder where the money went. DeVries insists it’s calculatingly spent.
“It was really important, like with every team, that we find complementary pieces, that the guys can play well off of one another,” DeVries says. “We prioritized skill and shooting. That was a big piece of how we play, and how we run offense, to make sure we had some great depth there. But I liked the way it came together. We were very intentional with making sure we got really good guys that set that locker room up for success long term. But in the short term, also making sure that we have a chance to be successful this first year.”
Truth is, no one can know. Not until this time next year. As for a quick two-day peek at this time, this year? Indiana has a well-conceived plan for being decent or better at playing modern college basketball.
“Toughness, unselfishness, discipline and enthusiasm – my first day at Drake, or our first meeting, those were the four things we talked about,” says guard Conor Enright, who played three years for DeVries at Drake. “First meeting we had here? Same four things.”
Indiana’s new buzzwords are less critical than Indiana’s refreshed structure, particularly after years of clinging to an NBA model for training produced less-than-inspired results.
The morning individual skill sessions — three players at a time this week, thanks to the thespians occupying Assembly Hall — run an efficient 30 minutes and any shot or movement correlates to something the Hoosiers will actually do, as opposed to something they might hope to do, someday, at a different level. All the trappings of a college basketball practice precede the afternoon’s full-team workout. (Indiana has the benefit of extra summer hours with a three-game foreign tour on the slate for August in Puerto Rico.) Music from a large sideline speaker? Check. Pre-practice film review in a corner? Check. A strength coach pacing and yelling as the players do various stretches and calisthenics? Check.
When Indiana commences with its actual work, it doesn’t stop. An offensive run-through bleeds into a drive-and-kick drill into a closeout and recovery drill into a protect-the-baseline drill, separated only by a whistle. The pace is absolutely the point. A coach can’t preach finding a shot in the first 12 seconds of a possession, as DeVries does, and countenance much downtime.
“Besides being a fun way to play, it’s a fun way to coach,” McDermott says. “It’s enjoyable to be around a group of guys that know they have some freedom. And I think that’s what kids want in this day and age. I think they want to be able to play through mistakes. I think they want to be able to have their foot on the gas. And if you make a mistake while you’re doing that, so be it. Do it (right) next time.”
There are giveaways, naturally, that everyone is still learning everything and everyone else.
During a walkthrough of an offensive set before practice, DeVries issues a not-insignificant reminder. “All these spots are interchangeable,” he says. “Y’all gotta know all of them.” (We pause here for Indiana fans who need a moment to compose themselves upon reading this.) The introduction of a brand-new drill turns DeVries from omniscient observer to hands-on choreographer, with a heaping spoon of grace. The Hoosiers, predictably, do not get the steps right. The head coach assures them it’s fine. They haven’t done it before. But patience, too, will have its limits.
“Really, when a coach is saying something, try to engage,” DeVries calmly tells the group, “so we don’t have to repeat it three, four, five times.”
For now, this is DeVries on the job: intent but measured, teeth ready to clamp down on his tongue, establishing standards while also very much trying to make sure his team isn’t miserable from the beginning. Hence, at least one practice twist DeVries hasn’t implemented before.
When Indiana sets up for a period of one-on-one competition, customarily splitting the roster into red and white teams, the scoring is simple. Get a bucket, get a point for your team. Get a stop, get a point for your team. It is when DeVries blows his whistle between showdowns that he introduces a complication: If you don’t cheer for your teammate, and you’re caught, you lose the point. A judgment that DeVries metes out, pretty hilariously, by raising both hands in the air before dropping them to point at the offending party.
It is cheesy. It is contrived. It’s aggravating to those at the raw end of the double-point. (“I clapped!” transfer forward Sam Alexis pleads, after costing his side a score.) It is also getting laughs and making a point at the same time. It is a quintessentially college basketball coach thing to do. “No one wants to come in every day and dread hearing his voice or dread practice,” Enright says. “He wants to make stuff competitive. Obviously, hit the details. But, shoot, you should enjoy basketball. It should be fun.”
In a weird way, in this altered reality of college athletics, DeVries uses hours of high-leverage work in a gym as a palate cleanser. To underscore the point and the new-age pressures: After morning skill work and some extra shooting, Tucker DeVries sits down for an interview 20 minutes before a scheduled Zoom with his uncle … who is also his financial adviser. “College basketball can sometimes feel like a job,” Bailey says, “and it doesn’t feel like a job (here).”
The next day is more of the same, and a keen reminder that this is Indiana men’s basketball in its scope, and a keen reminder that this is Indiana men’s basketball in the fitful stages of transition, all at once.
Shortly after DeVries issues a pop quiz during walkthrough — “Does anyone remember what ‘cheek’ means here?” — a guest takes a seat on the sideline. University president Pamela Whitten is here to watch a late June summer basketball practice, with a couple other VIPs. Every player and staff member lines up to say hello before getting to work. Only at Indiana, sort of.
It’s then into the same ratatat of drills, the practice plan driving hard at repetition for a group learning a new language. But there are some new concepts. There are some new tweaks to drills. The result is predictable. “I figured it was going to be a little sloppy,” DeVries says later, smiling. “And they didn’t disappoint.” Early in a five-on-five drill, DeVries gathers the Hoosiers at one end of the floor and — quietly, likely owing to who’s in the audience — more or less tells his team to pick up its energy and get its act together. Later, in another team competition period, DeVries crouches near midcourt and brings the action to a stop with a string of exasperated, staccato whistles.
“What’s the number one thing that’ll get us beat?” he asks.
“Turnovers,” pretty much everyone replies.
“And we just had three in a row,” DeVries notes, declaring they could avoid the mistakes with a little more grit, a little more determination, and a lot less softness.
Such is the bliss of a new coach’s first few months that there’s nothing to suggest time and experience won’t correct everything. Which means Indiana men’s basketball this summer looks and sounds like college in the summer is supposed to look and sound.
“Our group knows what it means to put on that Indiana uniform and how prideful this Indiana fan base is, and how people view Indiana, even outside of this fan base,” Tucker DeVries says. “I think our group understands that and is willing to put everything forward to make that fan base proud, to do everything we can to raise some championship banners.”
Meanwhile, near the bottom of a ladder that disappears into the clouds, Darian DeVries appears to be breathing at a normal rate. At last.
“The time it takes,” he says back in his office, describing the daily blur of getting this thing started, “is the time it takes.”
But over these three days alone, Indiana’s latest new hope will design and run three practices, bounce between hosting duties for the visiting prospect that include a night at Dave & Buster’s and a morning breakfast, and bring his team on a field trip for a corporate sponsor. This was before July’s grassroots recruiting whirlwind and that overseas trip and the convulsions of an actual season. Even the slow parts move fast here.
“We’re not there yet,” DeVries tells his team in the post-practice huddle. “But we’re gonna get there. We’re gonna get there.”
(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; photos: Icon Sportswire, Jeff Dean / Getty Images)