Stop me if you’ve heard this before.
A coach brings a bunch of players together from different levels of the game, different cultures, and different experiences with winning and losing. Yes, they are talented, but can they mesh, and form a successful team?
That was one of the main questions about IU football ahead of the 2024 season, and the answer there has been unequivocal.
In significant ways, Curt Cignetti was able to bring his winning culture with him from James Madison. 13 transfers and almost his entire staff helped ensure that the day-to-day particulars that led to success at JMU would carry over to Bloomington. It wasn’t the only reason they won, but it certainly didn’t hurt the cause. Many of those JMU transfers became the lead-by-example stars of Cignetti’s first Indiana team that went on to shatter the IU record books when it comes to winning.
Across the parking lot at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, new IU basketball coach Darian DeVries also arrives with a track record of winning. At .713, he has the sixth-highest winning percentage in Division I among active head coaches. Like Cignetti, he turned a Drake program that had been dormant for decades into a mid-major powerhouse, and he had West Virginia rolling a year ago before his son Tucker, a star of the team, was injured.
But college football and basketball are different in a lot of ways when it comes to roster construction and culture transformation.
DeVries has assembled a roster of 13 new scholarship players. If one or two of the players he was counting on turn out to be a bad fit, there isn’t the same kind of depth to make an adjustment. It can sink the ship.
And when it comes to playing winning basketball, DeVries does not have many players with a lot of experience in that area.
Two of his players haven’t played on a team with a winning record — Jasai Miles, Josh Harris.
Four haven’t played in an NCAA Tournament – Reed Bailey, Lamar Wilkerson, Nick Dorn, and Jason Drake.
And three more have no college basketball experience — Trent Sisley, Aleksa Ristic and Andrej Acimovic.
That’s nine of the 13 on the team, leaving just Tucker DeVries, Conor Enright, Tayton Conerway and Sam Alexis who truly know first hand what a winning, championship caliber culture looks like. And only one of them — Conerway — was a key contributor for an NCAA team this past March.
Alexis is the only person in the building who has seen an elite winning program up close at the high major level. He played on Florida’s national championship team a year ago. What did that culture look like?
“I learned that you’ve got to bring it every day at practice,” Alexis said. “The physicality and the energy every day at Florida was different.”
Indiana has opened their practice doors to the media a couple times this year, and the energy and physicality on the floor kind of smacks you in the face — even from the sidelines.
“I see similar things here for sure,” Alexis said comparing Florida to IU. “The way me and Reed (Bailey) battle every day, we’re getting each other ready to play in the Big Ten this year.”
Tucker DeVries won two Missouri Valley Conference tournament titles in three years at Drake playing for his father, and he has very similar thoughts on what it takes to create a winner. “It’s every day, just working to get better, not taking anything for granted,” Tucker said.
Darian DeVries didn’t have a lot of time to assemble a roster in the spring. He was hired in mid-March and the transfer portal opened less than a week later. By the end of April, the majority of his first IU team was in place.
DeVries emphasized a number of things when putting together his first Indiana squad, like players who could shoot, who like to share the ball, and who collectively form a functioning team.
But did he look for winners?
“For us, when we’re going through the recruiting process, even though some of them were very short, we looked at what’s important to them,” DeVries said. “I think for a lot of these guys, winning was very important to them. They have one year left, a lot of them. They want to go out as winners. They want to play in the NCAA Tournament.
“Those are things when that’s a priority to them you can tell pretty quickly that that’s what they’re motivated by. Their circumstances from whatever school they were, sometimes there’s only so much control you have on a team or a roster that you can impact, but I’m excited about the group. I think their approach is right. I think they’re motivated by the right things.”
The x-factor on DeVries’ first team at Indiana is probably his point guard, Conerway. He’ll have the ball in his hands facilitating the offense, and he’ll be the first line of defense guarding the ball on the other end.
Conerway’s college path has been as unique as they come.
Originally a Division I commit, he battled through three years of JUCO basketball. Conerway emerged from that experience a winner at Troy last season. Named the Sun Belt Player of the Year, he led Troy to the regular season and conference tournament titles.
Conerway learned the every day mentality Alexis and DeVries speak of through his own unique grind, and he picked himself off the mat.
“Coming out of high school I was on my high horse, I committed to (Division I) Tarleton and thought I was hot stuff,” Conerway said. “I went to JUCO and it kind of knocked me down. But I picked myself back up, and if I can pick myself back up I don’t need nobody else. Things aren’t just going to be handed to you.”
Through it all has emerged on a focus on the one thing Indiana probably needs the most from the 23-year-old Conerway.
“I’m just here to win,” he said. “If I have to sit to win or play 40 minutes to win, I’ll do whatever I have to do. I want to win. Everything I do is try to win.”
For complete coverage of IU basketball, GO HERE.
The Daily Hoosier –“Where Indiana fans assemble when they’re not at Assembly”
– Join our Premium Discord Chat by GOING HERE.
- You can follow us on X: @daily_hoosier and find us on Facebook and Instagram
- Seven ways to support completely free IU coverage at no cost to you.
