BLOOMINGTON -- In today’s college basketball landscape, success is no longer solely based on on-court achievements. Instead, it is a holistic approach to what the coach does as the program leader.
When Indiana president Pam Whitten and director of athletics Scott Dolson were in the process of hiring Darian DeVries, they laid out three important traits, one of which was how to be a CEO-like figure in the ever-changing college landscape.
“In this interesting time of college sports was demonstrating that I know how to be a CEO of a basketball organization, as well,” Whitten said during DeVries’ introductory press conference on Thursday afternoon. “Darian met those traits for us really in spades.”
Ahead of his one season at West Virginia, DeVries built up a struggling Drake program with limited to no resources, forcing him to take an executive role to get a dormant program moving in the right direction.
“It's how we get everybody so that we're all going in the same direction,” DeVries said. “We all have the same goals, and how do we make everybody's path align with that.”
DeVries has no plans to change the successful business model he brought to Des Moines and Morgantown. He will continue to rely on everybody inside Cook Hall to take the program in a new direction.
“It starts from the top, and then they've got to feed off of me and the way I act and I interact with the people I'm around, and then it carries over all the way on down,” DeVries said. “When you look at it and go, there's a lot of people that are underneath that head coach, from assistant coaches to ops people to managers to the players to support staff; all very critical parts of your success.”
It is unclear at this point which members of his staff DeVries will bring with to Bloomington, but a pair of his assistants have ties to the Indiana basketball program. Kory Barnett was a walk-on at Indiana from 2009 to 2012, while Tom Ostrom worked on Archie Miller’s staff from 2017 to 2021.
As he builds his staff, DeVries will continue to use his past experience as an executive to urge everybody within the program to contribute to a better future.
“That's what I think a good CEO does. He empowers everybody to be the best they can be, and they're all striving to do that because they know they get the opportunity to be themselves and to grow within our program.”
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