Todd’s Take: A Curt Cignetti For Indiana Basketball? What I Saw Darian DeVries Do At Drake Qualifies

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Naturally, I get asked by a lot of people who should be the next Indiana men’s basketball coach.

Among the realistic candidates, I haven’t had a preference. I’m not on Team Chris Beard or Team Ben McCollum. It always makes sense as an objective journalist to keep your mind free of bias, but that’s not where I’m coming from on this. Honestly? I see benefits to most of the coaches who have been brought up as well as drawbacks.

What I want is someone who can unify the Indiana fanbase and, of course, win in the way Indiana fans expect. I’m not sure that person exists or is available, so I don’t overly concern myself with glomming on to one candidate over another.

What I can do is to inform you about the candidates I’m familiar with. In that sense, my past sportswriting adventures and my present one might be converging.

On Tuesday, West Virginia coach Darian DeVries emerged as a leading candidate for the Indiana job. We’ll see whether this has legs or it’s the latest fleeting example of “so-and-so is the hot name of the moment,” but DeVries is the coach I might be most familiar with of all of them.

My longest tenured position as a journalist was covering Indiana State for the Terre Haute (Ind.) Tribune-Star for 18 years. Part of that job is generally covering the Missouri Valley Conference. Drake is an original MVC school.

DeVries was in the MVC for the same period of time I was covering the conference. He was a long-time assistant coach (2001-18) under Dana Altman and Greg McDermott at Creighton. He was oft-mentioned as a head-coaching candidate in those years, but didn’t get offered (or take) a job until he took over Drake in 2018.

Before we get to Drake, understand that Creighton was one of the MVC standard-bearers until they left the Valley for the Big East in 2013. DeVries was an assistant for the Big East iteration of the Bluejays from 2013-18.

DeVries’ specialty was guards. Creighton always had a solid-to-great backcourt when DeVries was with the Bluejays. Nate Funk, Johnny Mathies, Booker Woodfox and Antoine Young are not names you know as Indiana fans, but I remember them as excellent Creighton guards in a guard-dominant MVC. (The biggest name of all, Doug McDermott, played like a guard, but was a forward in college.)

DeVries finally got a head coaching job at Drake – a small private school in Des Moines, Iowa.

Drake went 24-10 in DeVries’ first season with the Bulldogs and didn’t look back. He went 150-55 at Drake and had a winning percentage at .732. He coached Drake to three NCAA Tournament appearances.

Those are nice numbers, but I can understand how Indiana fans would read that and say a lot of coaching candidates have numbers like that. To understand how impressive DeVries’ numbers are, you have to put them into context.

Drake basketball has a proud history. The Bulldogs were regulars in the top 25 from the late 1960s into the mid 1970s when the MVC had teams like Louisville, Memphis and Cincinnati. The Bulldogs made it to the Final Four in 1969.

However, Drake plummeted in the win column starting in the 1970s. A small school with few resources, even in comparison to modest budgets at other MVC institutions, Drake became the Northwestern of the MVC – a good academic school that struggled in its main revenue sport of men’s basketball. (Women’s basketball has always been good at Drake.)

Drake was a track and field school, not a basketball school. It was a men's hoops backwater.

Here’s an anecdote. In my first year covering Indiana State, the Sycamores lost at home to Drake in overtime. Trying to find a silver lining, I asked then-Indiana State coach (and former Indiana assistant coach) Royce Waltman a somewhat sunny leaning question about whether Indiana State showed any positive signs despite the loss. A new beat writer, I was clearly not reading the room.

“Todd,” said Waltman in that droll voice he had, “there is nothing positive about losing to Drake at home.”

That was Drake’s reputation, and it was well-earned. Other than a miracle 2008 season, in which one-year wonder Keno Davis was way ahead of his time in employing a five-out offense and won the Valley with it, the Bulldogs were a doormat.

From 1972-2017, skipping Keno Davis, these were the winning percentage of the Drake coaches: .436, .469, .477, .250, .442, .382, .313, .450, .472, .261 and .317.

Niko Medved was a one-year coach at Drake the year before DeVries arrived. He went .500 and parlayed that into a job at Colorado State. That’s how hard it was to win at that school. Even modest success at Drake looked good to those in the know.

So for DeVries to go .732 at Drake was well-nigh remarkable. Indiana fans are looking for basketball’s equivalent of Curt Cignetti. What DeVries did at Drake was absolutely Cignetti-like.

Tremell Murphy, Roman Penn — Drake Bulldogs forward Tremell Murphy (2) and guard Roman Penn (1) celebrate after defeating the Missouri State Bears in overtime during the semifinals of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament at Enterprise Center. | Jeff Curry-Imagn Images

It’s not just that DeVries won. Their offenses were consistently efficient and DeVries, a point guard at Northern Iowa in the 1990s, always had a rock-solid point guard running the show. Roman Penn is another name Indiana fans have no reason to know, but he was a very important lynchpin of Drake’s best teams under DeVries. Penn was one of the better point guards I saw in my time in the Valley.

Penn is also part of another reason why DeVries might be attractive to Indiana. The best players from DeVries’ first several Drake teams were dominated by kids from Indiana. Anthony and Tremell Murphy (Griffith), D.J. Wilkins and Jonah Jackson (Merrillville) and ShanQuan Hemphill (Gary) are all northwest Indiana stars. All but Anthony Murphy averaged double-figure scoring at some point in their Drake careers. Penn was from Calumet City, Ill., but played his club ball with those same Region-based players.

The Region has not been fertile ground for Indiana for a long time, but DeVries managed to get several players out of there to play at Drake of all places. What might he be able to do across the state of Indiana with the Hoosiers brand to back him?

It shouldn’t go unmentioned that one of DeVries’ best players is his son, Tucker. In three years at Drake and one at West Virginia, he averaged 17.7 points and 4.8 rebounds. If Indiana fans want someone who shoots threes, he’s your guy – Tucker DeVries has never shot fewer than 6.1 in any season.

Tucker DeVries only played eight games with West Virginia, his season ended prematurely by an upper body injury, so he should qualify for a medical waiver to play one more season.

Indiana fans don’t know Darian DeVries very well – for example, his first name is pronounced “Darren,” something no Indiana fan should really be expected to know. So trepidation about his possibly being Indiana’s new head coach is understandable.

DeVries has only one year of major college basketball coaching on his resume – although dragging a West Virginia team that had virtually no roster when he arrived to a 19-13 record is impressive. So I can understand why some Indiana fans might be skeptical.

However, take it from someone who saw DeVries up close and personal. If he ends up being Indiana’s choice? He gets my seal of approval. The man can coach. The man can win. Google him. You'll see.

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