How is Darian DeVries Doing So Far?

[Demo]

30 minutes ago, HoosierHoopster said:

He's doing pretty damn well right now. There's always games left to be played until the end -- important that we close well, yes not in yet, but holding off on recognizing that he's doing a heck of a job right now, winning 5 of last 6 including road games? It doesn't hurt to recognize things at this point in time look pretty good. Imo that we have a good coach is pretty clear now.

Agree. A lot of the issues now are roster decisions from 8-9 months ago. Nothing you’re gonna do about that. But I thought this team had no chance to defend and they were gonna have to win  every game 92-89 and that’s not the case. They play hard and physically. They communicate pretty well and they don’t give up easy stuff. They’re gonna have bad matchups but they hold up. And offensively they’ve developed an on court identity and when you have a flamethrower he’s creating space for others and you can get consistent looks. Thought after Iowa this thing could get sideways and it hasn’t and that’s on DDV, too. I am on balance pretty happy. This team is worth watching and rooting for.

[IU Prof]

8 hours ago, eddy4iu said:

2 more wins barely get us in the tournament? Get real.

CDD is delivering in his first year regardless - team is fun to watch again.

Given how soft the bubble is, I'd like our chances with two more wins. At 19-13, I think odds are we'd be in if the first game loss in the BTT is to another tournament team.

19-13 with a loss to Penn State, Rutgers, etc., though, could be a bit stickier.

Beat NW, MN, and one of Ill/Purdue/MSU/OSU and I think we're comfortably in.

 

[CSP]

My thing with the judging of CDD... was the cupboard. Not a single player came back (not that we wanted many of them at all) and only one, marginally top 100 recruit.... he built a very competitive roster after completely starting from scratch AFTER JUST DOING THAT AT WVU!! ... Loved that WVU roster, it was a little more athletic than ours, currently. 

I like where we are. 

[68Hoosier]

33 minutes ago, CSP said:

My thing with the judging of CDD... was the cupboard. Not a single player came back (not that we wanted many of them at all) and only one, marginally top 100 recruit.... he built a very competitive roster after completely starting from scratch AFTER JUST DOING THAT AT WVU!! ... Loved that WVU roster, it was a little more athletic than ours, currently. 

I like where we are. 

^^^ This ^^^

And I will add that they play team ball and have gotten better as the season has progressed.  The last 4 years we seemed to get worse as the season went on and the teams did not seem to gel at any point.  There always seemed to be locker-room issues (even if there wasn't) and no team chemistry.  

[str8baller]

3 hours ago, Stuhoo said:

Yup — only two more conference wins barely gets us in the tournament.

And we have at least seven conference games remaining.

And we’re 8-6 in conference.

That’s why currently the status of how CDD is doing is… quite good.

We have 6 more conference games, not 7. Unless you are counting the BTT, which the committee is pretty wishy washy on how much that even matters.  
 

So I’m with you being more optimistic, and we should win those two easy home games…well, easily. But we’ll will be pretty big under dogs in 2 of the other 4 (but I wouldn’t write off the Purdue game). And slight under dogs in the other two, although I like our chances better every day vs OSU because we are two teams trending in opposite directions.  
 

In any event, we still have some work to do to get to “pretty damn well” as a first year grade, imo. 
 

[str8baller]

10 hours ago, eddy4iu said:

2 more wins barely get us in the tournament? Get real.

Seems to be a fairly consensus opinion and has been for some time. So you “get real,” good sir! 

[RoadRage]

I have no problem with DeVries right now, I’ll admit I was worried a few weeks ago because i was not seeing much improvement and felt some guys had even regressed a little. But I see plenty of improvement now, I just hope our slow start doesn’t come back to bite us. Alexis is a much better player now than early on, and Wilkerson is much better too, i would love to hear if LeMar credits DDV for his improvement or just getting comfortable and coming together as a team. But as a fan, I think coach deserves a lot of the credit for those two guys!

[Golfman25]

CDV has made some changes which is a great sign vs the typical stubborn coaching style we see.  Moving Alexis into the starting rotation and now letting him lose down low a little bit has changed the game.  "Slow walking" Conerway back into any rotation seems to have helped as well.  And getting his son to play a more complete game has worked wonders.  

For whatever reason, they were in a mid season funk back in Dec/Jan.  No longer there today.  Arrow looking up.  

Just beat IL.  :)

[Home Jersey]

We've done a nice job digging ourselves out of a hole. Wish we closed the Nebraska game out because then we'd be headed into this stretch with an opportunity to really improve seeding.

Regardless, lot of improvement over the course of the season and this is generally when you want to see the team start rounding into form / firing on all cylinders. We will see the extent of that based on how we do against Illinois, Purdue, and MSU. Gotta take care of business against the others.

Make the tournament and who knows with a player like Lamar. In any case you have to like what you've seen from DDV and team these past handful of games or so. Convert our top targets in the portal and year 2 could be very good. 

[CSP]

Two things.... 

1. I like how fast and confident we play-- never been one to believe in "bad shots" let the f***** fly, go rebound misses, sprint back on D, regardless.

2. We play "aware" ... Enright, Tucker, TDV, all of them, really... we don't make stupid plays, selfish plays. 

 

I think both of those things are great selling points moving forward. I mentioned last week... between TDV, Wilkerson (mostly) and the others SRs, obviously, we will have a healthy amount of NIL to spend... and I would think some more donor money/maybe football helped some... I think we will be in a really solid spot NIL wise this offseason, albeit with holes to fill. 

[str8baller]

21 minutes ago, RoadRage said:

would love to hear if LeMar credits DDV for his improvement or just getting comfortable and coming together as a team.

I’d love to hear an honest assessment too. Honestly, it looks to me like Wilkerson is now just really comfortable with the speed and athleticism of the B1G. Early on in conf play he would get into the lane and looked like he was kind of overwhelmed. Now he’s driving and scoring in there and it’s opened a lot up for him.  
 

But, I bet the coaching staff did a lot of work to get him to this point. The reason I think that is because you see something similar with Enright. When teams were laying off him and daring him to do something, it’s real easy for a player to get in their own head and start questioning themselves and hesitating after a few misses. Then eventually they get scared to do anything. It seems clear to me the staff stayed on him to be aggressive and even maybe encouraged him to try and score and distribute more. It’s paid off and to the point where last night instead of leaving Enright open they had a guard picking him up almost as soon as he crossed half court. 

[Stuhoo]

2 hours ago, str8baller said:

I’d love to hear an honest assessment too. Honestly, it looks to me like Wilkerson is now just really comfortable with the speed and athleticism of the B1G. Early on in conf play he would get into the lane and looked like he was kind of overwhelmed. Now he’s driving and scoring in there and it’s opened a lot up for him.  
 

But, I bet the coaching staff did a lot of work to get him to this point. The reason I think that is because you see something similar with Enright. When teams were laying off him and daring him to do something, it’s real easy for a player to get in their own head and start questioning themselves and hesitating after a few misses. Then eventually they get scared to do anything. It seems clear to me the staff stayed on him to be aggressive and even maybe encouraged him to try and score and distribute more. It’s paid off and to the point where last night instead of leaving Enright open they had a guard picking him up almost as soon as he crossed half court. 

Enright's assist to turnover rate has been truly extraordinary for the past month. 

He's up to an outstanding 4:1 (4.8/1.2 per game) for the season. But during this winning streak?

• Rutger: 2/1
• Purdoo: 8/3
• UCLA: 7/2
• USC: 8/1
• Wisconsin: 6/0
• Oregon: 8/1

Total during this win streak? 39/8 for an average of 6.5 assists to 1.3 turnovers per game. And the past four games? 29/4. That's 7.25:1.

Lamar is playing insanely well? Yes, but so is Conor Enright.

 

[Uspshoosier]

26 minutes ago, Golfman25 said:

For whatever reason, they were in a mid season funk back in Dec/Jan.  No longer there today

Who and where they were playing had a big part to do with that.   I would guess most on here didn’t think IU was going to compete for a national title in year 1 and 3 of the 4 teams they played are considered title contender teams.  I think people see Nebraska and think automatic win at home.    Most years yes but this year they are legit.   Ius 4 game losing streak consisted of Nebraska at home( projected 2 seed), @Michigan (title favorite), @Sparty (projected 2 or 3) and home against Iowa (tourney quality team that IU should of competed better against but didn’t).  For me the Iowa game is the worse loss of the season for IU ( the optics of DeVries losing to Ben at home when both are from Iowa and IU flat out had a crap game. Would love to play them in the BTT.   If those loses were spread out over the B1G season I don’t think people would have been losing their minds as much however they all happen in a row.  That is a tough of stretch on a schedule for any team.    Season isn’t a straight line although it would be nice for it to play out that way for fans.  Teams, especially non elite tourney teams with a flawed roster, are going to have ups and downs.    Finish strong and no one will remember that stretch 

[str8baller]

16 minutes ago, Uspshoosier said:

If those loses were spread out over the B1G season I don’t think people would have been losing their minds as much however they all happen in a row.

I don’t think anyone cared about Michigan or MSU. This thread was made after Iowa, correct? And as you say, that was the worst loss of the year easily. But it capped a 45 day stretch of futility in every quality game we played, starting with getting beat at Minny, no-show to start the Lville game and not competitive, blowing double digit leads to a struggling UK and Nebraska at home all leading into Iowa.  To your point we continued to beat the dregs of the league, but largely looked non competitive versus anyone else.   
 

I think they’ve actually improved. It seems to have coincided with Bailey and Conerway exiting the lineup and Dorn and Alexis entering it. 

[Uspshoosier]

1 minute ago, str8baller said:

I don’t think anyone cared about Michigan or MSU

It’s a message board of course people cared about it.   Bad games happen and IUs happen to be against Iowa at home.   The season doesn’t go in a straight line and teams as you said can improve.   Here is the actual thing for IU fans for 8 years they watched IU and for most the part the teams stayed the same or got worse.  I would argue the Covid year Archie had them playing better but for the most part they were the same team all year.  Same with Woody for the most part.  He got hot in the conference tourney his first year and needed both those games just to be second to last team in.   In my opinion good or bad you need to give a team more time then a bad 4 game stretch or a good 4 game stretch to judge a team.   Even before the Iowa game there was a lot on here that said IU would be lucky to win 4 more games all year.  Thats just fan emotion and built up frustration from a program that hasn’t had much success to say that that early in the season.  Either way everyone wants the same thing which his him to be successful 

[Stuhoo]

14 minutes ago, Uspshoosier said:

It’s a message board of course people cared about it.   Bad games happen and IUs happen to be against Iowa at home.   The season doesn’t go in a straight line and teams as you said can improve.   Here is the actual thing for IU fans for 8 years they watched IU and for most the part the teams stayed the same or got worse.  I would argue the Covid year Archie had them playing better but for the most part they were the same team all year.  Same with Woody for the most part.  He got hot in the conference tourney his first year and needed both those games just to be second to last team in.   In my opinion good or bad you need to give a team more time then a bad 4 game stretch or a good 4 game stretch to judge a team.   Even before the Iowa game there was a lot on here that said IU would be lucky to win 4 more games all year.  Thats just fan emotion and built up frustration from a program that hasn’t had much success to say that that early in the season.  Either way everyone wants the same thing which his him to be successful 

It's interesting; the mindset can be described by the great philosopher Curt Cignetti:

When reminded by a pre-game sideline reporter that Indiana had never won at Penn State, Cig responded "This team has never played here." And that wasn't just true for that season; he wouldn't have said that if his staff and some of the same players had lost at PSU the previous season.

So CDD has the same dichotomy; the fans understandably have a connection to the team and their performance that goes back decades, but this staff and group of players have literally zero connection to the failures of the past. So how this staff and group of players reacts and adjusts to adversity has been completely speculative. And now we are seeing some really good signs for the future.

[tyappleg]

5 hours ago, Home Jersey said:

We've done a nice job digging ourselves out of a hole. Wish we closed the Nebraska game out because then we'd be headed into this stretch with an opportunity to really improve seeding.

Regardless, lot of improvement over the course of the season and this is generally when you want to see the team start rounding into form / firing on all cylinders. We will see the extent of that based on how we do against Illinois, Purdue, and MSU. Gotta take care of business against the others.

Make the tournament and who knows with a player like Lamar. In any case you have to like what you've seen from DDV and team these past handful of games or so. Convert our top targets in the portal and year 2 could be very good. 

We are currently right on track for the Louisville type rebuild that I was hoping for.  9/10 seed in year 1, and hopefully a strong transfer class gets us into the top 25 next year and we can maintain that success until we can take another leap further down the line.  

[Stuhoo]

12 minutes ago, tyappleg said:

We are currently right on track for the Louisville type rebuild that I was hoping for.  9/10 seed in year 1, and hopefully a strong transfer class gets us into the top 25 next year and we can maintain that success until we can take another leap further down the line.  

Gonna need Dorn, Sisley (a given to me) and to a real extent, Miles to return to impart staff processes and culture into the new additions.

Drake, Harris, Ristic, and Acimiovic would also be valued as returnees for the same reasons, as long as the staff thinks they will contribute someday on the court too. Drake gives me some good vibes - hoping he's gonna be okay for the long haul.

[iu eyedoc]

On 2/7/2026 at 7:14 PM, Josh said:

Man I hate "not my fault".  Lack of accountability is the biggest issue is striving for greatness.  

Fact is he didn't make the tourney.  He needs to this year.

Fact is he absolutely does not need to make the tourney this year and probably not next year either.

[iu eyedoc]

On 2/7/2026 at 8:50 PM, AH1971 said:

He’ll just move the goal posts and double down on next year lol

 

On 2/7/2026 at 8:49 PM, Josh said:

11 seeds don't impress me.  

Already prepped and ready.