Darian DeVries Shares First Comments On Hiring Ryan Carr

Indiana on Feb. 23 announced a new hire that's significant for a few reasons. Ryan Carr will join the men's basketball program as the executive director of basketball.

He brings valuable perspective after spending the past 23 seasons with the Indiana Pacers –– working his way up from scout to senior vice president of player personnel –– where he helped construct a 2024-25 NBA Finals runner-up roster.

Carr's role with the Hoosiers will focus on roster building, an especially important factor for Indiana entering its season season under coach Darian DeVries, who put together a flawed roster in his first try.

Evaluating talent, recruiting the transfer portal and managing NIL is a complicated process, and Carr is on board to assist in those areas. Carr's role is something that has become more common around college basketball in recent seasons, and it shows Indiana's commitment to trying to improve the program in a variety of ways.

DeVries spoke about Carr's hiring for the first time during Monday's Inside Indiana Basketball radio show.

"I'm really excited about it," DeVries said. "First of all, Ryan has an incredible reputation out there, not only for his basketball talents and skills in that regard, but just an awesome person and a great addition for us to add to what we're trying to do. The way the game has evolved with the portal and NIL, he's gonna be a huge addition for us."

"He's got incredible experience, NBA experience. For us, recruiting and the connections he has across all of the NBA teams, to have that direct line to every organization, to be able to almost promote our guys from within and be able to have the insight –– because he's one of those guys that's just so well respected and trusted in the profession, that when he tells somebody that we have that they should take a look at and really value, they're going to take his word for it."

"So I can't wait for him. He's just getting started right now, but I can't wait to see what that looks like for us as we continue down this path as we're just finishing up our first year. But really excited to have him visit with everyone tonight. I think you're gonna see right through how genuine he is. He's just a terrific, terrific guy."

It's also a homecoming for Carr, who was a student manager under Indiana's Hall of Fame coach Bob Knight from 1992-96. Now he'll report directly to DeVries, who spoke more about Carr's responsibilities with the Hoosiers.

"We'll evolve [his role] as well. It's a newer position in the profession, so it's something that we definitely wanted to add," DeVries said. "I think just initially right now when you're thinking about the biggest impact that he'll have is just from an evaluation standpoint in the portal."

"He has such a really good eye for how to build a roster, for evaluating talent and understanding the analytics of talent and what it looks like and projecting out. So when you have someone that has the expertise that he does, that's gonna be huge for us as the portal has become such a vital part of recruiting, especially for us in the spring here."