INDIANA UNIVERSITY BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

December 20, 2025

Darian DeVries

Postgame Media Conference

Indiana Hoosiers 78, Chicago State Cougars 58

Q. Darian, obviously kind of a striking difference in the three-point shooting first half to second half. Seemed like a lot of the shots you were taking in the second half were probably shots you'd like, shots that were open, that were the product of the way the offense was functioning. Like, what is a key to -- maybe it's a simple answer, but what is a key for especially an experienced team, guys who've seen those shots go down, to just kind of keep shooting through it and to not lose confidence or maybe let it slip in some other area like rebounding or defense that they can kind of isolate those struggles and just sort of play through them?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, I agree the shots we got in the second half were the same ones in the first half. We were getting really good, clean looks by some of our best shooters so it was one of those halves where you go 1 for 20.

It's like, the easy thing to do is say hey, let's get more paint touches, go drive it. The hard thing to do is when you got a guy that if he's wide open he's making 7 out of 10 there's. It's finding that balance of I don't want them to hesitate, so you want them to stay confident. It's also after a while if we're not making them, we have to be able to get in there.

I thought the guys middle of the second half or so, late middle second half out of the time-out, we were able to get some of those paint touches, able to get downhill. Got a couple lobs and stuff like that.

For us, it's always been you got to stay confident as a shooter and sometimes similar I guess use a baseball. One guy hits a home run, you see two or three other ones, everybody started hitting. Sometimes shooting can be that way too. Guys kind of feed off one another. I thought that second half, you could definitely feel it go in a never way for us of we kind of lost a little bit of our confidence. They weren't shooting it with the same swagger that they're accustomed to.

Q. Curious how much of an emphasis the defensive rebounding has been in practice and do you feel like you're getting better, making progress there? In your eyes, what's the key to becoming a better defensive rebounding team? Is it simply blocking out? Is it positioning? Just kind of what goes into that?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, for us, it's not there. We're not there yet and that's something as we get ready for our last non-conference game and come home from Christmas break and get ready for the last stretch run of Big Ten games is that that has to become a priority for all of us. That hasn't quite registered yet with our group of how do we become a good defensive rebounding team? Because we can. You have to do it is certain we for us to be successful. It's not going to be a run and jump contest for us. It's got to be a physicality, toughness contest. A want to. That's where we got to get to.

Q. Coach, you have a quick turnaround obviously with Monday and then you have like two weeks off. How do you approach this next day and then next two weeks?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Tomorrow we'll recap this one, have rah quick film session -- not quick, but a film session on Siena and do our kind of walk through and practice. It has to be fairly light with the minutes and things. You don't get a lot of live reps, guarding them, them guarding us so you have to rely a lot on your principles and things and shoot around on Monday before we play the game.

After the game, the guys are basically free until they get back for practice on the 27th. So get a nice little break here in college basketball world at least, to go see some friends and family for a few days so I know they're stated about that.

Like I told them, the main thing is we have to make sure before we do that, we got a game we have to get ready for and make sure that we leave for a good Christmas. So that's our number one goal, to make sure we come out ready to play on Monday.

Q. The home run example, are there things you can use, an approach you can take to true to create that swagger or is it just really as easy as they have to hit the shots?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Sometimes it's as easy as they have to hit the shots. A lot of times as a coach, you have something struggling, you try to find them a way to get a layup. So you get a layup and then maybe you see one go in, getting to the free-throw line, sometimes that's great for shooters, too. We did a few things tonight to try to get a couple of the guys a layup or an easy one opportunity. A couple of them the play just didn't work, we weren't able to get it. Overall that's kind of the offs is set of how do you true to get them going is maybe try to find them an easy one.

Q. Conor Enright, seven assists tonight, just one turnover he's up to top five nationally in assist to turnover ratio. What does he do for you guys not only limiting turnovers but also as a play-maker on the offensive end?

DARIAN DeVRIES: I think Conor is terrific. What he does is, A, he plays with great pace off of misses especially and Conor's a smart guy. He knows how to get assists so he finds the guys that he knows that can make them. In transition, he's always looking. He's always hunting for guys to come free and I think that's what makes him that ultimate team guy. He's always about understanding what it takes to try to get some guys going, get some easy buckets for guys.

Q. Yeah, Darian, basically a week off from the Kentucky game. What was this week like in practice and then how do you think you carried it over from practice to today?

DARIAN DeVRIES: I thought our practices were pretty good. We put a huge priority on taking care of the basketball and then defensive rebounding. It was our main focus the entire week of how do we get better in those two areas? I thought, to be quite honest, we were just okay again tonight on that. It's something we're going to continue to prioritize every night.

Overall we've been pretty good on the turnover department most of the year, so it's been just a little bit recent that gotten a little careless with it. You just can't beat good teams turning the basketball over and giving them live ball turnovers.

But I think this group, I would say they're unselfish. You see the assists and the turnovers and things. At halftime we were in a really good spot. Just the second half, we just weren't very clean on either one of those areas.

Q. Darian, when you have one of these nights where the shooting is white hot but then it just goes sideways and you talk about the confidence level in that, are you afraid and what can you do about that bleeding over into other areas? Free-throw shooting, not exactly great tonight either. At one point, it was just above 50%. What can you do to try to mitigate that?

DARIAN DeVRIES: I think it's from a mindset standpoint it's something we talk about all summer and fall. I know we're a three-point shooting team. That's what we do. But our mindset has to be regardless of shots falling, our defense has to keep us in the game. For the most part in the second half, we still held them to 34%. Missing whatever we were, 0-15, the reason it never got close again is because we still did a good job of defensively not giving them easy ones. On a night like that, that's what it's going to have to be.

I give our guys some credit there. They didn't let it completely turn into hey, we're not scoring, loss all focus at the other end, now giving them easy shots, easy opportunities. They still stayed really engaged and I thought they did a pretty good job at making things as difficult as they could.

Q. Coach, you guys tied a season low with fouls tonight and I heard you on pregame radio say you went back and looked at all the fouls thus far. Was there anything you identified when you went back and took that look in terms of these are the kind of foul weapons need to cut out while not sacrificing, still being physical on defense?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, a lot of them were verticality issues. Some of them were in transition off of turnovers, which that's harder because as the guys are driving, trying to keep your hands back and still give them a challenge at the rim. But we're going to be a heavy hands team, trying to rake at balls, getting steals, getting deflections, heavy at making entries difficult and that wasn't really where we were picking up a lot of our fouls.

A lot of our fouls were kind of in the cheap reaches, not ones where we're going to have a high rate of success. We broke down some of those fouls and where they came from and showed them the difference between, hey, here's an aggressive one that we're willing to accept a foul every now and then and here's the ones we got to stop. Maybe it's reaching in from behind or whatever when you don't need to. That's something that, A, we can't let them B at the free-throw line and, B, we don't need you sitting over or not bench. So that's something we put our priority on this week or talked about a lot.

I don't want us losing our edge either from a defensive standpoint. Our two-point field goal percentage defense is one of the better ones in the country and we don't have shot blocking, so there's a reason for that too. We got to make sure there's just a nice balance of we don't want to foul but we also maintain our physicality.

Q. Going back to the very beginning of the game, you gave a game ball to Lamar from the other day and then the way the game started, bang, bang, bang, hit four in a row. As a coach, what are you thinking just in that snapshot when the guys come out like that and they hit everything and in that most of it was Lamar. Did you think you're going to have to give him another ball?

DARIAN DeVRIES: That's exactly what I was thinking. We're going to have to get another ball ready if this keeps going. No, it was good to see Lamar get back. In that Kentucky game, he played well he just wasn't out there long enough with his foul trouble. It was good to see him get off to a good start.

He's playing with a lot of confidence right now, so that's fun to watch him as he's in one of those zones.

Q. About Nick, I think it's four times in the last six games now he's hit multiple threes in a game. I think it's three times in at least four. He talked about maybe feeling like he's kind of got his sea legs back now after obviously not just the recovery, but also just getting the conditioning up and the sharpness. How much more do you think he can kind of grow into a role for this team, whether it's off the bench, whether he pushes to get into the starting five at some point. What can he bring as maybe he finds more of that comfort?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, I think, A, he's doing a really good job like we talked about. He's giving us something additional especially from a shooting standpoint. He's one of those guys who can get two, three, four in a row in a hurry.

What I've been most impressed with as he continues to get his game legs under him is his defense and he rebounding. Those are the areas that we're looking for from everybody. We talk to guys on all the time right now about if you want your role to extend or you want to gain a role, those are a couple of areas where you can really help us because that's something we really need and prioritize that on top of whatever else that you're good at.

Nick, and we all can see he can certainly shoot the ball. His minutes from a rotation standpoint, as his minutes are growing, we're trying to figure out some of those rotations to get him the amount of minutes that he probably needs to be getting.