DeVries is in the process of hiring assistants and a support staff ahead of his first season in Bloomington.
New Indiana head men’s basketball coach Darian DeVries has his work cut out for him when it comes to assembling his first staff in Bloomington.
He’ll have one of the largest staff budgets not just in the Big Ten, but the country, at his disposal in doing so. How he chooses to use that will say a lot about the direction he intends on taking the program in.
Most importantly, he’ll have to bring on a few full-time assistants. Three assistants will be allowed to recruit off-campus on the head coach’s behalf. Those three hires will be crucial.
How should Indiana leverage this? Well,
Someone with connections around the state of Indiana
In order for the head coach in Bloomington to have a successful tenure, they have to be able to recruit the state of Indiana.
Indiana does not need to have multiple kids from the state or depend on it for its leading scorers or high-usage guys. Great basketball players come from everywhere these days and you don’t, and shouldn’t, limit your focus to one geographical area, especially at a program with these resources.
But Indiana was, is and always will be a hotbed for Division-I talent. It happens pretty often that a player leaves the state or goes to a smaller program and ends up being great.
But the players don’t need to be great. They can be role guys in the starting lineup or off the bench, there to hit 3s when they’re open and provide energy on defense in the mold of a Luke Goode.
Politically, the roster needs to have players from the state. When you take kids who can play that aforementioned role and use them well, you’re more likely to get the inside track on future prospects with star potential. Coaches in the state respect hard work and valuing their players, just look at how Purdue has operated.
Someone with broad, NBA-caliber connections
Indiana is still a huge brand and has managed to send multiple players to the NBA in recent years. It’s evident that players can come through the program and make it to the professional ranks.
That’s vital. The best teams in college basketball always, always have NBA-caliber talent on the roster. It’s helped carry many a team to a title and keeps things fresh on the roster.
This is not to say Indiana should adopt a John Calipari-esque approach (nobody can anymore, probably) or just throw some talent together and hope for the best. But adding a five-star here and there to a roster where they’d make sense raises the ceiling of a group with a low floor.
Purdue made that happen with Jaden Ivey. UConn did that with Stephon Castle. Baylor had Davion Mitchell. Virginia had De’Andre Hunter. The list goes on.
It’s a proven way of building a championship-caliber team. Indiana has the resources to get those kinds of prospects on the roster, the program needs the connections to make it a bit easier.
An x’s and o’s guy
Indiana can absolutely use the third major spot for another recruiter and that would be a perfectly fine move. There’s two more non-recruiting assistant positions, but those are a little less attractive for obvious reasons.
Another option is just going to get someone who knows ball and loves the nitty, gritty, nerdy parts of the game. The kind of person who can recite the team’s points per possession off of a specific action or how often they run it to begin with while drawing up sets that leverage a guy’s individual strengths.
Putting someone like this in that position would send a strong message that playing a modern, innovative style matters to Indiana and DeVries. He’s already strong in this area himself especially with his long background at Creighton, but it can’t hurt to have another mind to bounce ideas off of and generate some of their own.
It’s not an apples to apples comparison, but Luke Murray helps fill this type of role up at UConn and the Huskies have been pretty good lately. Food for thought one way or another.