DeVries’ more open approach to the media could serve him very well in Bloomington.
It’s no secret that the Indiana men’s basketball program hasn’t always had a strong working relationship with the media.
Now, as someone who’s worked with the folks in IU’s communications department, I can tell you they’re about as helpful as it gets at the collegiate athletic level, where access is hard to come by just about everywhere for various reasons. There obviously has to be some distance between a program and the media, and there should be, but that doesn’t mean the relationship has to be adversarial.
It’s been a long, long, long time since that was actually, definitively true in Bloomington. One of Bob Knight’s more well-known attributes was his relationship with the media, which had its… ups and downs, for sure.
At least one thing was true: Knight held the media at an arm’s length. Sometimes he’d agree to an interview. Sometimes he wouldn’t. He voiced his displeasure with how things were reported or the way he or his team was described in the press time and again.
That doesn’t mean he didn’t use the relationship he had to his advantage when he could. He understood the media’s reach, especially back then, and his press conference rants are now the stuff of legend.
It’s been a long time since Knight has walked the halls of Indiana’s athletic facilities from a position of true authority and other coaches have come and gone with varying relationships with Indiana’s media apparatus. As such, there’s plenty of examples to work off of. The most recent being Mike Woodson.
Now, this isn’t necessarily a harsh criticism and should be read as such. Every coach is entitled to work with the media as they deem fit. Their programs, their rules.
Mike Woodson wasn’t adversarial or anything like that with the Indiana beat. If he was asked a question (even if, bluntly, it was a bad or poorly-phrased question) he’d provide an answer and didn’t really lash out at any reporters. That may seem a low bar, but we’ve seen enough coaches go viral for scolding reporters (particularly students, of which there are many in Indiana’s press rooms).
He didn’t do give many individual, voluntary one-on-one interviews during his time in Bloomington. When he addressed the media, either in few and far between non-television pregame availabilities or in postgame, he didn’t linger too long, taking a handful of minutes to answer questions before taking his leave.
Again, it’s every coach’s right to work with the media as they see fit. Woodson had his approach and he stuck to it. His appearances were very, very minimal and went as far as opting out of the coach’s radio show and even the pregame radio availability with Don Fischer.
Here’s the thing: giving interviews and doing these appearances gives coaches some level of control. They’re able to get their message out there and dictate the narrative to some degree. It may not always be fully on their terms, but that’s what an opening statement is for.
Some of the best coaches across all sports realize this and use it to their advantage. Some are particularly savvy with the media and understand the relationship. Coaches need the media to get their message out and the media needs coaches for information.
It’s not always coaches and insiders texting, with an insider telling the coach they’ll report or hold back on something with the assumption that they’ll get access later. Sometimes it’s a coach taking issue with an official’s ruling during a game and a member of the media noticing and asking about it postgame, giving said coach a chance to explain their view of the situation.
If a coach doesn’t make these appearances they run the risk of completely losing control of the narrative on themselves, their players and their program. Radio silence cannot exist, especially not in high-level college athletics and especially not at a program under as much if a microscope as Indiana.
That empty space, created by the lack of a coach’s statements, is getting filled. Columnists are gonna give their take. Podcasters are going to speculate. Message boards will do what they do. The narrative will run wild in a way that becomes almost irreversible.
Something like that is always going to happen no matter what, but a coach not making these appearances makes it substantially worse on themselves. Again, take the example of Woodson.
The narrative around Woodson was an absolute maelstrom that consumed the last few months of his tenure at Indiana while creating a handful of problems here and there before that.
Certain podcasters with a strong following dropped an episode about a private meeting they had with Woodson that painted him in a bad light. Countless media members claimed he wasn’t the right guy for the program with varying levels of intensity. There wasn’t, and still isn’t, a full story on how Woodson’s departure came about.
Is that all Woodson’s fault? Of course not. He doesn’t deserve blame for how certain folks spoke about him.
But it’s undeniable that his lack of availability created a void that some were extremely willing and eager to fill.
That brings us to Darian DeVries. Let’s use another example here in Purdue’s Matt Painter.
Painter has a reputation among the media and beyond for being one of the better coaches to deal with. If you ask him a question he’s going to give you the best answer he can, even going overboard in a way when he really, really gets into the x’s and o’s of the game.
When the Boilermakers lost to Fairleigh Dickinson back in 2023, Painter lingered at the postgame press conference to make sure everyone who had a question for him had the opportunity to ask. He understood that Purdue’s fans deserved an explanation and was willing to give his time in a moment that was no doubt incredibly devastating. That says a lot.
Another one of the reasons he’s earned this reputation is because he opens his program up more than others. The media has been welcome (to a degree and at times) at Purdue’s practices, members of his rosters are typically pretty available for interviews and he’s granted several interviews to outlets over the years.
Indiana hosted the media for an open practice for the first time in my memory ahead of the Hoosiers’ trip to Puerto Rico. Participants in that practice were promptly made available for Q&A sessions and DeVries himself spoke at length afterward. Not a lot of coaches do that.
I don’t know whether it was DeVries’ idea or someone on the program’s communications team. But DeVries had to give the green light.
Indiana’s fanbase is absolutely starved for this kind of content, these Q&A’s with players and a coach who really takes the time to sit down and explain what’s going on. By doing so DeVries exercises a level of control over the narrative. Nobody has free reign to opine on this or that because DeVries has already covered it himself.
When Conor Enright was told how rare that sort of thing is and asked what it said about DeVries and the team, he said it helps to show what kind of group Indiana is.
“I think we’re gonna be a tough, hard-playing team,” Enright said.
This is only the start, but DeVries’ approach to the media so far has been interesting and could help serve him well as he navigates all that it means to be the head men’s basketball coach at Indiana University.