Watch as new IU basketball coach Darian DeVries met with the media on Wednesday in Bloomington.
DeVries was introduced by IU President Pam Whitten, and AD Scott Dolson.
The full transcript is below.
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Indiana University Basketball Media Conference
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
President Pamela Whitten
Athletic Director Scott Dolson
Head Coach Darian DeVries
Press Conference
PAMELA WHITTEN: Good morning! I am Pam Whitten. I’m the president of Indiana University and I am here on this happy day to kick off an event where we announce our new coach for men’s basketball.
I’m going to start us off, just make a few brief comments, then we’ll transition over to our AD Scott Dolson who will talk a little bit more specifically and then we’ll bring up the man of the hour to speak with you and answer questions.
Let me start off, first of all, by acknowledging and thanking Coach Mike Woodson, such an important part of Indiana University. He first pulled up in Bloomington back in 1977, a tall skinny kid that came to play basketball and lit the court on fire, and almost 50 years later is still such an important part of the Hoosier family.
The porch light will always be on for Mike and his wonderful wife Terri as they will always be an important part of the Hoosier family.
I also want to take a moment and thank the board of trustees for Indiana University. I want to thank them for their support, and I want to thank them for the trust that they put into both Scott Dolson and myself in terms of the process that was used to get us to this point today to secure such a talented coach.
Speaking of thanking people, I need to make sure to thank Scott Dolson. I have to tell Darian that, man, you hit the jackpot with the AD that you’re going to work with at Indiana University.
Scott Dolson is a man of integrity and intelligence, and I think he very well might be among the best athletic directors in the United States. So I think you’re going to enjoy working with Scott, maybe even as much as I do, moving forward.
Scott had a wonderful process in play as we went through and were able to take our time and be thoughtful and land such a home run as a coach for Indiana University.
As all things at IU, we don’t do things willy-nilly, we are thoughtful and we are strategic and we are intentional, and Scott is going to talk in more detail in a second about what that means specifically with Darian, but I will share with you that in addition to the obvious importance of character to us at Indiana University, there were three things, three important traits that really were top of our list as we considered who would be the next coach of basketball at Indiana University.
That included being a great coach. Really knowing basketball. So knowing how to coach.
The second one was knowing how to win. Demonstrating that you could win and you knew how to win, as well.
And then the third one in this interesting time of college sports was demonstrating that I know how to be a CEO of a basketball organization, as well, and Darian met those traits for us really in spades. Just a terrific, terrific man in terms of what he’s going to bring to Indiana.
I want to close by saying something that probably won’t mean much or get picked up outside this room, but Darian, this is for you and me. When we had a chance to visit during the interview process and we were talking informally about things, I don’t even know that you realized that you said some things that touched me so much and were so important to us.
That was the recognition that it’s about the student-athletes and it’s about the students. When we go into Assembly Hall, there’s a lot of important people that are going to be in Assembly Hall watching games, but the most important people in Assembly Hall are always the student-athletes, and right behind them are the thousands of students in the student section. They are why we’re here at Indiana University is for our students.
You in that conversation made comments recognizing the importance of teaching students at all times, student-athletes, too, and recognizing that we want to create an amazing college experience for them, as well. So thank you for that.
Now, I will also tell you that these students want to win, so let’s go get them some banners, as well.
On that note, let me introduce our athletic director, Scott Dolson.
SCOTT DOLSON: Thanks so much, Pam. Thanks to all of you for being here, particularly on short notice.
Honestly, I just couldn’t be more excited about today. This is a huge day for IU basketball, a huge day for our athletic department and certainly for our entire university and the whole university community nationwide.
I want to start with some thank yous just like Pam did, and I also want to mention Woody and thank he, his staff, his coaches. One thing that was clear during the search process is that this is a coveted job and there’s a great foundation in place, and certainly Woody and his team deserve a ton of credit for that.
I also want to thank our current players. Our current players, it’s never easy going through transition. I know when the transition happened during the season, we talked and talked about hopefully galvanizing the team and coming together, and the team rose to the occasion.
I just couldn’t be more proud of the current team and just so thankful for all they put into this year’s team, and wanted to certainly recognize them.
I wanted to recognize President Whitten. Honestly, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it all the time, I don’t know how she does it. She sets the tone in terms of working hard. She literally has a million things going on, and anytime we come to her, and particularly something like this, we have her undivided attention. Her input, her collaboration is incredible.
I remember being on a trip not that long ago, on a plane trip, and Stephen Harper and I when we landed back in Bloomington very late. We talked as we were riding back to get my car, and he just said, I don’t know how she does it because she was just so engaged and so helpful and has so much energy. She sets the tone.
Honestly, the alignment is critical. You hear those words a lot, alignment between the president and the athletic director and the coaches is critical. We’ve got an unbelievable situation, and I’m so grateful for it. Honestly, it made this job that much more attractive. Her role is just super important.
Just not sure she’s really gotten the recognition or the credit which she deserves. But the great things happen in IU athletics wouldn’t be happening without her and obviously without the rest of the university.
I want to thank our department staff, particularly Stephen Harper, our deputy athletic director, who has just been a rock. His tireless work, his invaluable input, he just is super important to me, not just with this search but to the department. I want to thank him.
Our secret weapon is a person you may not know, a person named John Decker who’s one of my right-hand people. John is behind the scenes and just an unsung hero. He’s kind of been the mad scientist as we put together — he did this with this search in terms of what wins, what are some of the analytics out there, and the information that he produces in a short time is incredible. I just want to thank him.
I also want to thank Pete Yonkman and Hoosiers Connect, our collective. Again, this job was very attractive. It was very invigorating for me as we went through the process how many people were interested and how many people were talking about our program and our collective and the resources that provides, how they do it, our reputation nationally is that we do things right, and we’re really second to none in terms of our organization. And that goes along with Tyler Harris, as well.
I also want to thank — there’s several key confidants that we’re very fortunate to have. Indiana basketball stretches across the country, college basketball, pros; we have former managers, former players that are in key places.
I can’t tell you how many conversations I had during this search where confidentially they were giving me information and feedback that is so valuable. They know who they are. I just want to make certain to thank them.
Finally, I really want to thank our fans. I want to thank our donors, our supporters for their relentless support. They’ve been with us through thick and thin, and honestly, I talk a lot about — I just said this earlier. This job, hearing people’s feedback, whether it’s candidates or other people, how much this job is coveted.
It’s a top job in America and our fans are a huge, huge part of that. I just want to make certain that they know how excited I am about where we are today and how much they are a part of this process and that we want the same things they want.
Again, a big shout out to our fans.
The search strategy, Pam alluded to this for a second. We put together a profile, and I won’t go through all the qualities we were looking for, but we certainly did a lot of work in terms of what qualities would ensure what we felt would be consistent success here.
A couple examples of that, and Pam mentioned a couple, we wanted an experienced, successful coach that had a blueprint for winning. 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.
It was really important to us. We wanted someone that really wanted to be here. We felt we were in recruiting mode, but at the same time we wanted someone that really was recruiting us, that really, really wanted to be here.
So certainly we had a national search, as you know, and were really deliberate with the process, stuck with the process. Had several candidates, and it became clear that we found our person, and we went after him and we got him. We couldn’t be more thrilled about that.
You’re probably wondering why Darian, what separated him, what were the things that really distinguished him to be the candidate, the selection. Honestly, it started really before I even knew that Darian would ever be a candidate.
I had the opportunity — there were two occasions that I had the opportunity to watch Darian’s team play. Once when he was at Drake, we played in the NCAA Tournament in Albany. Drake played Miami. Stephen Harper and I came out early and watched the second half of that game, and I remember he and I talking about how Drake played. It was impressive, and that’s when I first realized who Darian was.
Secondly, this year in the Bahamas, again, had no idea we were looking for a coach, more as a basketball fan watching college basketball, I watched the Gonzaga-West Virginia game and was really — again, Stephen Harper can tell you, we sat there after that game just going, wow, so impressive how West Virginia played.
So kind of knew of him.
Certainly when we realized that we were going to be in a search, his name then was in the back of my mind, would he be a candidate.
The things — there are three things that highlight ultimately when we did get into the search and dug in deeper what really were the reasons that it’s Darian. 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. One key datapoint that I’ll point out, and I’m not going to go into too much detail on data because, again, our mad scientists, we dug deep and really dug deep into key metrics.
One of the things that was super interesting was looking at what were Darian’s winning percentages in games decided by five points or less, and he had a 65 percent winning percentage in his career. That’s a big thing.
As we looked around the country, that’s something that’s really significant with winning programs. All that stuff mattered.
The No. 2 reason why he was singled out is he really understands and coaches modern offense in a tough blue collar defense. It fits here. One of the things that we learned, recruits really want to play in the type of system he runs, and that was evident, as well.
It was super interesting. I got a text last night late from a father of a former player of ours who Darian had recruited out of high school, and that parent texted me just to say, wow, you hit a home run. Darian recruited my son.
I don’t want to say who it is, and said that he is an absolute perfect fit on and off the court. His style is going to really resonate, particularly how he looks forward. It really meant a lot to me. Just validated what I knew and felt why we selected him.
But I thought it was a really interesting text from a father of a former player of ours.
His offense, I won’t go into the datapoints, but we’ve looked at all the data of his offense. He’ll talk about that I’m sure. His defense. But the bottom line, it’s a winning formula and a blueprint that we’re really comfortable with.
The third and final thing I’ll mention is that Darian is a great person with an incredible work ethic and incredible character. Again, I talked to a lot of people, a lot of people, and people came back every time with, wow, he’s a great person, number one, and he’s a ball coach, and his reputation is really, really good.
He’s super highly respected on and off the court.
Then the final thing is, which you’ll see, he has a passion to be here. He wants to build the identity of Indiana basketball, and we want a consistent identity. So we couldn’t be more excited.
With that, I want to welcome certainly Darian but also his wife Ashley, his kids Tucker and Tatum to the IU family and couldn’t be more excited. This is a great day for IU basketball, so please welcome our new head coach, Darian DeVries. (Applause.)
DARIAN DeVRIES: Thank you, everyone, for being here today. It’s truly an honor for me to be standing here as the head coach at Indiana University. I want to start off by thanking President Pam Whitten, Athletic Director Scott Dolson, and the board of trustees for this opportunity to lead this historic basketball program.
One year ago today I took the West Virginia job after I’d left Drake University because I felt like it was a great fit for myself, for my family. It had an administration that I greatly respected and a fan base that was very supportive and a community that was filled with great people.
All that turned out to be true in the past year and we were welcomed with open arms. We met some terrific people, and my family and I are beyond thankful for that.
Obviously my intention was to continue down that path and build on the progress that we made during this first year. However, 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.
This place has many of those same qualities that my family and I look for and want to be around, and I’ve always looked for that fit for myself, for my family, and making sure it all aligned.
We have an administration here that is 100 percent in alignment with navigating through this whole new era of college athletics, from the top down. There’s no doubt that there’s an extreme commitment to making sure we are on the upper edge of all of that. There are resources available here that are some of the best in the entire country.
We have a fan base that is passionate about the Hoosiers and provides a tremendous home-court advantage. 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.
I am so excited to get to work, and I know that where it all begins is with the work. It has to start and end there, because without that, you cannot have success.
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. We will know when we have made it when every time a fan, a booster, an alumni, or a former player comes to watch us play and turns on the TV, and after that game is over, that they are filled with pride because they have so much respect for how our team plays, how unselfish they are, the joy they play with, and the enthusiasm they play with and their love for this university.
Once we get there, and once we get there where everyone can watch us on a nightly basis and they can say with great pride on a consistent level that that is my team, that is when the banners will rise again. It’s time for us to get to work.
Just from your perspective, we’ve kind of heard President Whitten’s perspective, Scott Dolson’s perspective, but from your perspective, how did this unfold in terms of sitting with them to consider the Indiana job? What have the last couple days been like through your eyes?
DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, obviously the process is the process. I know how it plays out. As you’re going through their season, they were very respectful of making sure that my focus continued to be on our team and certainly appreciated that.
What I loved about how the process played out was from our very first conversation, there were certainly — we mentioned the word “alignment,” but there was an alignment to my vision, their vision, and how do we make this go together.
I think that’s very important because the way we want to build this program and build it to a level that is sustainable and be at a very high level, there are certain things that we feel — that I feel is important in our program.
I thought those all aligned with the administration as we went through that process, so getting into more details later about the offense, defense, all those type of things, but more importantly, that we can’t cheat the process. The work has to go into it. The type of players that we bring into our program have to match what we’re about.
I think the majority of your winning takes place on the very front end, your coaching staff, the players you bring into your program, what are their qualities, what’s important to them, are they self-starters, are they self-motivated, are they team players. Those type of things are all important to us.
As that process played out, it was clear and evident to me that this was going to be a great fit for myself, for our family, and can’t be more excited to be here.
You’ve had to replace a significant portion of your roster each of the last two seasons. What lessons did you learn from those experiences? And obviously the resources are important, but what else in this era kind of defines roster building to you? What’s important?
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.
- As part of what you just said, you can sell a vision to the players. How do the players buy into your vision? What have you been successful in doing to make them believe that you’re the guy who can make that vision happen?
DARIAN DeVRIES: Anytime you’re at a new place, you can only use your past experiences and your coaching record and things. I think the biggest thing for them when I’ve had discussions with them is, hey, here’s you as a player; here’s how we play; here’s how we envision you.
And most importantly, be truthful. Talk to them about, hey, this is where we see you. We don’t make promises that we can’t keep. Everybody comes in basically on the same note of I’m going to come because I want to work hard, I believe this coaching staff can get me better, they can challenge me, they can motivate me, and I’m going to love that process. I’m going to love being where I’m at.
I think for us that’s extremely critical as you put a roster together and build your team.
Just wanted to ask a basketball-specific question here. Your team I think when everybody was healthy was top 45 or so in three-point rate, averaged nearly 30 three-point attempts per game. Can you explain your offensive philosophy, what are the key components you want to have on the court every night, and how important is it to you from a roster construction standpoint to have multiple shot makers on the team?
DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, 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.
You mentioned getting to know guys in terms of recruiting and figuring out what they’re about. How challenging is that in this new era where you have this really short window where you’re probably going to want guys in for visits pretty quickly? What are you looking for when you do have guys on campus to figure out whether there’s an alignment?
DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, that’s where your staff is critical. You have your staff put together their relationships with people and maybe you recruited them on the front end and they went somewhere else and now you’re getting an opportunity there. As many of those opportunities that you can where you have relationships, you’re going to do background checks.
As you mentioned, you used to have maybe two, three, four years to build up that type of background check. Now you get two or three weeks a lot of times.
I think for us, it’s very critical, and we put a lot of time and effort into talking to people that know the kid the best and then reading body language, reading teammates, all those type of things are so important to us.
Because when you have that basketball locker room, 13 to 15 guys, it doesn’t take one or two to really make that experience for everybody not as enjoyable. So we want to do the best job we can on the front end to make sure, hey, they’re all about the right stuff, they want to come here, they want to be a part of a winner, they want to be self-motivated to accept the challenges to become the best they can be, and then play to win. That’s ultimately what you’ve got to do.
As you mentioned earlier, you put enough of those guys in a room together, you can get some pretty good success from that.
Curious on your approach to non-conference scheduling. How do you look at that?
DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, 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.
What gives you the confidence as a coach that you can lead this program to long-term stability and success?
DARIAN DeVRIES: For me, I think sometimes as coaches, we don’t want to make it too difficult. Simplify it. Make it what it is. We’ve got to be good at these certain things. You’ve got to have a certain level of talent, but then the teams that can do defensive rebounding, taking care of the ball, playing together, playing unselfish, the teams that can do that the best typically are the teams that have the most success, and that’ll be our focus when we put a roster together. Just make sure those things are all priorities.
You certainly want to have as much talent as you can, but that talent has to be able to play together. So when we put that roster together, that’s going to be our focus. How will this group function together when we put them out there on game night.
- As far as recruiting, how do you want to weigh high school and college?
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.
- You had a high-major job; some people say this job is a fishbowl here. What do you think it says about you personally that you didn’t hesitate and jumped right into this opportunity?
DARIAN DeVRIES: I hope everybody, every fan base wants to win. I want to win. We all want to win. The passion is awesome. You want passion in a fan base. You want that. You thrive off that. Our players thrive off that. Nobody is going to want to win as bad as I do or our players do or our staff does or our fans do.
So from my standpoint, let’s do that together. As a fan base, as a community, let’s rally around one another to let’s go make this thing happen and let’s take this thing to as high a level as we can and try to put that on a consistent basis.
I love the fact that we have a passionate fan base. I think it’s awesome.
I know it’s soon, but will you talk to the current team members that are still here, the recruits, about whether or not there will be a place for them? And how do you look to adjust that into what you’re building with your roster?
DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, we’re going to try to get with everybody individually. I will hear in these next few days. A few of them are gone on spring break. But I’ll get that chance to get in front of all of them, talk about, hey, I didn’t recruit you, you didn’t recruit me, either, so let’s see where they’re at.
Like I say, it all comes down to fit. If we have some guys on the current roster that still would love to be here and it seems to make sense for both of us, let’s do that. And if there’s some guys that feel like they can find a better connection somewhere else, there’s no hard feelings there. They didn’t come here because I was the head coach, so I understand that.
Then as you move forward, now it’s just us going out and finding the guys to fill around whatever holes there are. But I think it’s always good to take a few days to get in front of them, get to know each other. This is our first conversation together. So let’s see what that looks like for everybody.
You had quick turnarounds at both West Virginia and Drake; I think a 10-win improvement at West Virginia from before you got there. What were some of the key points to generating that rapid success and how do you kind of apply that to Indiana?
DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, I hate to be repetitive on it, but I think it’s on the front end. I think when you’re very particular about the guys you recruit and don’t give into it, 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.
That’s what we’ll always make our focus.
- Darian, this program over the last 25 years has really kind of toed the line between honoring the past and living in the past. As a newcomer walking into a program with such history and tradition, how do you view that back and forth? How do you uphold one side without going too far to the other?
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.
Over 20 plus years on the sidelines; how gratifying is it for you as a coach to have this opportunity of a lifetime, and does it feel like hard work finally paying off for you here with this opportunity with IU?
DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, as I mentioned, this is one of the premier schools, basketball schools in the entire country. To be standing here today, and you go back and look back 28 years ago as a GA and where you started — and I’ve loved every place I’ve been.
That’s what I love the most. Your coaching journey is special. It’s unique for everyone. I’ve enjoyed my time when I was a grad assistant at Creighton all the way up through assistants and head coaching, and now I’m looking forward to this next step.
I believe we can do some special things here, so I’m really excited about what that can look like and the people that are committed to making that happen, and we’re going to do everything that we can from our time and efforts to make it a reality.
You mentioned being oriented. Do you credit that for your winning percentage in the close games that Scott mentioned? And two, what does oriented look like in games versus practice and just overall for you?
DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, I think you’ve got to give credit to the players. A lot of times in those late games, like the execution piece and guys making plays, getting stops, all those things that hopefully from June until that January 12th game when you needed it, they put in that time and effort to put themselves in a position to go make those plays.
From a practice standpoint, I believe in a very up-tempo, enthusiastic, energetic practice slot. We don’t sit out there for three hours. We go as hard as we can for about an hour and a half as the season goes on, 60, 70 minutes. But it’s very detail oriented, fast paced, and I think guys just get so much more out of that, and they learn a lot quicker to be put in those game situations that now they don’t have to think. They’ve done it every day. They’ve had to react on it and be quick on their feet, simulated by every practice that we have.
Darian, we heard Dr. Whitten talk about the CEO aspect of being a college basketball coach and in your eyes what does that mean for you leading a program to be a CEO?
DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, when you look at it and go, there’s a lot of people that are underneath that head coach, from assistant coaches to ops people to managers to the players to support staff; all very critical parts of your success.
So I think that, again, it’s how do we get everybody so that we’re all going in the same direction. We all have the same goals, and how do we make everybody’s path align with that.
It starts from the top, and then they’ve got to feed off of me and the way I act and I interact with the people I’m around, and then it carries over all the way on down.
I think when you get that, it’s kind of a thing of beauty because you can just tell everybody is in sync. When you can see a team and how in sync they are and how connected they are, that’s what I want our program to be from the top to the bottom. I want there to be a connectivity from every single person that touches our program.
That’s what I think a good CEO does. He empowers everybody to be the best they can be, and they’re all striving to do that because they know they get the opportunity to be themselves and to grow within our program.
And that’s what’s exciting, especially when you’re just starting a new program or a new job here is all of these people that are going to be a part of our success.
Darian, this is a program with National Championship pedigree but not much success in this century. How do you unlock the full potential of this program?
DARIAN DeVRIES: Again, I’m not going to sit here and say we’re going to win this amount of games or that amount of games. 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.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
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