Why Darian DeVries embracing Indiana men’s basketball’s past matters

Former players like Cody Zeller and Victor Oladipo have been welcomed into DeVries’ Indiana program with open arms.

Darian DeVries was asked about honoring Indiana men’s basketball’s past when he made his first appearance as the program’s head coach back in March.

It was an understandable question, obviously. Indiana is one of the most storied programs in the history of the sport with a lengthy list of team and individual achievements and notable alumni. The program occupies a revered spot in the culture of the state and the sport.

DeVries gave a pretty understandable answer too.

“I think you embrace everything about the past,” DeVries said. “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.”

But that’s just the introductory press conference. Saying you’re going to honor and respect the past and actually doing so are two very, very different things.

Well, almost five months have passed since then and DeVries has already done it. The program has hosted former players like Cody Zeller and Victor Oladipo in Bloomington for visits, posting about it on official social media channels:

That may seem like a no-brainer, and it kind of is, but it’s not unheard of for new coaches at college football or basketball programs to not be as welcoming toward said program’s alumni. Those coaches’ tenures usually end quickly and poorly.

It’s important at Indiana in particular. The Hoosiers have a wide, wide, wiiiide network of former staffers, managers, players and others who’ve been involved in the program who are around the sport. The NBA and college basketball landscapes are dotted with them.

Let’s say a coach isn’t as welcoming, isn’t as willing to hear out those alumni about the program’s history. That network comes into play and word like that travels pretty quickly in the modern age. It’s a pretty clear sign of dysfunction early on.

That was never a problem for Mike Woodson, who knew just about everything there is to know about the program going in and had support from alumni, but it definitely presents an opportunity for outsider candidates like Kelvin Sampson, Tom Crean, Archie Miller and now DeVries himself.

That alumni network was wary of Sampson due to his past NCAA violations, and you probably know how that ended. Crean rather famously embraced the program’s past and gained some favor quickly in doing so. Miller was a bit less of a welcoming force and that ended pretty poorly.

DeVries has made a point out of not just welcoming these alumni, but appearing next to them in public photographs. Again, that sounds like something small and it is. But those little things matter and add up over time.

It’s still extremely early in DeVries’ tenure, but he’s doing a lot of the right things up to this point, which should be taken as a good sign.