Doyel: IU basketball fans underwhelmed by Darian DeVries hire need to read Mailbagg™
Can’t please everyone, you know? Sometimes you can’t please anyone, and this is not the weekly Mailbagg™ feeling sorry for itself. Not more than usual, anyway.
But this is the Mailbagg – no, this is me – feeling sorry for IU basketball, which pulled off the hire of the century and still faces backlash from #iubb fans because, clearly, they weren’t expecting Darian DeVries. Which is fine. Nobody expected the Hoosiers would hire … who? West Virginia’s Darian DeVries?
Hard to anticipate everything these days. Harder still to make a hire like this – a coach this good, at a place with as much scrutiny as Indiana basketball – and catch everyone off guard.
Indiana AD Scott Dolson did it, and we gave him his flowers here, and then folks in my IndyStar subscriber text message group started to respond.
Sigh.
Doyel: Darian DeVries' record, experience shows he's ready to restore IU basketball
IU basketball hires Darian DeVries
From: Dennis S.
Gregg, there is no way you can convince me this was the guy IU wanted to lead the program. There is zero about his record and experience that shows he’s ready for the pressure cooker that is IU basketball. Nothing. Nada. What this does show me is no coach of any caliber wanted the job. This is how far the program has sunk. In three years he’ll get the bum’s rush out like Mike Woodson. Terrible hire, but clearly, the only hire IU could make.
Don’t know if this will make you feel better or worse, Dennis, but IU didn’t bother asking many (if any) other “coaches of any caliber.” In recent years IU’s schedule had lined up just so, allowing Dolson to watch – and be blown away by – DeVries’ teams in action: Drake’s loss to Miami at the 2023 NCAA Tournament in Albany, N.Y., and then West Virginia’s upset of Gonzaga earlier this season in the Bahamas.
Dolson filed it away for future notice, and what do you know? IU coach Mike Woodson needed to go, sorry, “retire,” and Dolson went for his guy and got him.
One more thing:
“Zero about his record and experience” shows he’s ready for IU?
DeVries’ teams are 169-68 with three NCAA Tournament appearances in six chances, and his 2025 West Virginia Mountaineers were an egregious snub by the cowardly selection committee. His first team at Drake recorded a seven-victory improvement from the previous season. His first team at West Virginia recorded a 10-win improvement. He has never won fewer than 19 games – this season at West Virginia, after the Mountaineers went 9-23 last season – and won those 19 games despite losing his best player to injury in December.
Drake to West Virginia to IU … that’s the most normal-looking ascension ever. Bob Knight was at Army before IU, remember? His final team there went 11-13. If you want to complain, write about THAT hire. Because Bob Knight to IU in 1971 made zero sense. And in three years he got the bum’s rush out of Bloomington, didn’t he?
Doyel in 2023: On the death of IU coach Bob Knight, and the reckoning of a legacy
From: Fred W.
I wish I had a crystal ball like yours! I appreciate your analysis and I hope you're right. IU fans are fickle because of high expectations – but that means he needs to hang another banner in Assembly Hall, not just make the tournament. I certainly hope you're correct. Maybe as one of his first acts he needs to throw a chair across the court to gain affection from IU fans.
Why, to be like that dude from Army? Didn’t he get the bum’s rush out of here in three years? There was zero – nothing, nada – about Bob Knight’s record and experience that showed he was ready for IU.
From: Spencer R.
Underwhelmed with this choice.
I forgive you.
From: William H.
I watched DeVries’ introductory press conference and was excited and impressed. He talks about a TEAM of compassionate players, not a collection of NIL talent. Holy Matt Painter, I think we got a good one.
You sure, William? I don’t know. Hiring a coach with a 169-68 record and history of turning around teams immediately … doesn’t that show you that no coach of any caliber wanted the job? Doesn’t it show how far this program has sunk?
Please forgive me.
Doyel: Darian DeVries is the one to fix IU basketball. Just watch
Southsider vs. UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Stadium
The text group is back-and-forth. I see every text – more than 2,500 have signed up; join us on the link below each of my columns online – but readers see only what I send out. Maybe five or six texts a week, mainly links to my columns before anyone else gets them, or an occasional peek behind the curtains.
Like this text I sent a few days ago:
From: Me to the group
Good morning guys. My bosses love when I do this – and by that I mean, they don’t love it at all – but someone tell my bosses I’m writing a column today, not planned, about the Indiana baseball team playing its first Big Ten series at UCLA, in a stadium located on grounds meant for homeless veterans. You’re never going to guess who organized the first protests there, and got the ball rolling more than a decade ago on a situation that remains fluid. You won’t know his name, so I guess what I mean is: You’ll never guess where he’s from.
Hint: he was all-sectional basketball player at Southport in 1960.
I’ll share it here first.
From: Allan S.
All that reading to find out I have to wait for the rest of the story
Mad at you.
(Mailbagg aside: I shared the link a few hours later, about Southsider Bob Rosebrock’s peaceful war with UCLA – a war he’s close to winning. Huge response, unusually large for a story about a college baseball stadium in Los Angeles. Love this group!)
From: Mike G.
As a veteran, I’m also incensed at the utterly cavalier treatment of land specifically designated for housing veterans. However, we also know if IU refuses to play there, the spineless NCAA would make them forfeit.
Thank you Mike for your service, truly. Thank you also for that brilliant callback to my column on the Big Ten making Northwestern women’s basketball forfeit games it declined to play at UCLA and USC during the deadly wildfires.
Doyel: Northwestern women had to forfeit because Big Ten sold its soul to SEC
From: Michael A.
You know, Rosebrock has a good point. When you bequeath land for a designated use, how can anyone rightfully not honor that?
Staggering greed and betrayal, especially considering the betrayed were – are – distressed U.S. veterans. Disgusting.
From: Joan A.
I’m from southern California, and I remember funny stuff going on over the Los Angeles Dodgers’ baseball field.
Yeah? And?
From: Joan A.
Just googled it. “FUSS OVER CHAVEZ RAVINE FOR DODGER STADIUM.” Very interesting.
Wow. That’s appalling. For decades Chavez Ravine was owned by Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles, and destined for federally funded public housing – until Walter O’Malley moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to southern California and decided he wanted to build Dodger Stadium there. And the local government let him, using eminent domain to push out nearly 2,000 families.
You can HAVE Los Angeles.
From: Jane S.
My brother Tom was in Bob Rosebrock's class at Southport. After law school he packed his Rambler station wagon for a job at the San Francisco VA as an "Adjudicator" (essentially reviewing veteran claims for entitlements, some decades old; he retired from the VA). His move broke my parents' heart. They followed his old Rambler to Colorado in their Oldsmobile, then tearfully bid goodbye.
Tom has shared info about Bob Rosebrock through the years when Bob was in L.A. and Tom in the Bay Area. They connected in California – location, location and all that – and I got the impression Bob R. was prolific and dogged in his determination.
Such a small world, Jane. And what a story about your parents. They followed your brother’s car to Colorado before turning around and coming back?
Heartbreaking.
Doyel: Southport's Bob Rosebrock fights UCLA because "a soldier’s duty is never done"
Purdue basketball reaches Sweet 16
Purdue beat McNeese State to qualify for the Sweet 16. The Boilers became sloppy after the game was thoroughly out of hand – it happens – but as I took great pains to make clear in the column: For 25 minutes that was Purdue at its best, and at their best “the Boilers are Final Four good.”
From: John H.
So you think if Braden Smith turns the ball over eight times against a Top 20 team, they will win?
Took great pains to make clear in my column … never mind. You can read, John. You just don’t care. And this, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with much of society.
Don’t forgive you, much of society!
From: Ryan M.
Wild – Final Four is what I was thinking, too And I hadn't thought that all season.
So you think if Braden Smith turns the ball over eight…
Forgive me.
Doyel: Final Four version of Purdue showed up vs McNeese State
Not printing these
From: Michael B.
Pacers played the hottest team in the NBA, the Timberwolves, missing four starters and lost the fifth to a ridiculous ejection at halftime, and lost their sixth man to fouls midway through the fourth quarter – and somehow willed a win in overtime – AND YOU DIDNT WRITE ABOUT IT? Are you secretly a Knicks fan?
That happened the Monday night, in Minnesota, after Selection Sunday. I’d written six columns the previous week, and ended up writing six columns THAT week. I’m just one person, Michael.
From: Valorie G.
Where is your story about Braden Smith making first-team All-American?
Listen, Valorie, that happened the Tuesday after the Pacers played the hottest team in the NBA, the Timberwolves, missing four or five starters and so forth and so on, and I’m just one person. Plus I’m secretly a Knicks fan.
No I’m not!
From: Sean T.
I’m driving with Focus turned on. I’ll see your message when I get where I’m going.
Kind of deep, actually. I’m impressed with your philosophical flair for writing an automatic response, Sean.
From: Barbara R.
I’m driving with Focus turned on. I’ll see your message when I get where I’m going.
Oh.
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.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana basketball fans doubt hire of West Virginia's Darian DeVries
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