We’ll see, but maybe!
The 2025 NBA Draft is in the rearview mirror and, for the first time since 2022, no Hoosiers were selected.
That doesn’t come as a surprise. Jalen Hood-Schifino was seen as an NBA prospect as a high schooler, Trayce Jackson-Davis wasn’t without his suitors as a second round pick and Kel’el Ware was oozing with potential when the program signed him out of the transfer portal.
This past season’s roster carried no such near-guarantees. The closest Indiana was probably going to get was Mackenzie Mgbako, the league loves tall guys who can shoot, but he didn’t take nearly as much of a necessary leap to get into first round discussions.
But potential NBA players were always a fixture on Mike Woodson’s rosters. High 4-stars or outright 4-stars would end up in Bloomington with their sights on the NBA, trusting a league lifer to help them get there.
Things are different now with Darian DeVries in charge of the program. But how different? All we can go off of is DeVries’ past, what he’s said as Indiana’s coach and general sense about how things work at Indiana’s level of basketball.
DeVries’ past experience doesn’t necessarily have the makeup of NBA pipeline, there’s not a lot of future All-Stars or first round picks going through Creighton (particularly at the time) or Drake, and he didn’t exactly have the time to do much development or recruiting at West Virginia.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Indiana became a viable path to the NBA under Woodson and won all of one first round game in the NCAA Tournament in four years. Having future NBA players or draftees on a roster doesn’t mean success.
But success usually means having future NBA players or draftees on a roster.
Here’s the most recent men’s college basketball national champions and how many future NBA draftees they had on their roster at the time of said championship:
- 2025: Florida, 3
- 2024: UConn, 4
- 2023: UConn, 4
- 2022: Kansas, 3
- 2021: Baylor, 2
These are rather extreme examples, yes, but Indiana’s stated program goal and ceiling is national championship contention. If a team wants to win a title, it has to at least have a few future NBA draftees on the roster.
Does that mean Darian DeVries should go around and only offer 5-star one-and-done type players? Certainly not. Many of these players weren’t that archetype, most were developed over time and realized their potential as future draft picks rather than walking onto campus with their names on mock drafts.
If Darian DeVries and Indiana are seeking that kind of success, that’s the program they should strive for. There’s always room for those one-and-done players on championship squads, but they need to be supplemented by future pros developed within the system.
That’s not going to happen in a year or two, Indiana’s going to need time if it gets to that level. But DeVries’ offensive philosophy that emphasizes 3-point shooting and putting talent/shooters in a position to do what they’re best at is conducive to the offense being run in the NBA, particularly right up the road with the Pacers.
It’s a good system for players with NBA potential, even if it isn’t immediate, to learn and develop in. Luckily for DeVries, he has a strong assistant coaching staff that can identify and recruit those kinds of players.
Now this is not, at all, to say that DeVries is gonna start generating regular draft picks and deep tournament runs immediately. If that happens, it’s going to need a few years to get off the ground. Those players need to be recruited and that system needs to be established. Again, this is all just based off of what DeVries has said and run previously. It’s within the realm of possibility that things change.
But based on what we know right now, there’s a path.