INDIANA UNIVERSITY BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

July 15, 2026

Darian DeVries

Postgame Media Conference

Indiana - 98, Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf - 64

DARIAN DEVRIES: Just want to say before we get started here, just wanted to say that our thoughts are with Coach Moren and her family. She lost her dad today. So certainly some tough times for them right now, and wanted to make sure that they knew our thoughts were with them.

Q. We saw from Aiden tonight the versatility in his offensive game in particular. But he's talked about having to adjust to a slightly new position. Just how have you seen him kind of evolve maybe his game knowing he's going to need to be a little bit more inside-outside, a little bit more versatile in some of the lineups he's going to play in this year?

DARIAN DEVRIES: Yeah, our thing with Aiden is we want him to be that guy that just does everything and getting him to be in that position where he's got the ball a lot on the perimeter, he's got the ball inside, he can take advantage of mismatches.

I think you saw a little bit of it tonight. He had a little fader in the paint. He had a couple of 3s. He had a couple of blocks. So there's really not a lot he can't do.

And our thing for him is just to be that dominant guy every night. That's what we're challenging him to be, is every night out we know that we're going to be able to rely on him.

He's done such a great job and working incredibly hard at putting time into his game. And he's grown a lot even from June till now. It's fun to watch him approach it that way.

Q. Between practices and tonight, Prince just looks like such a spark plug for you guys off the bench. Just how excited are you by what you've seen from him so far?

DARIAN DEVRIES: Yeah, Prince is what you saw tonight. Like, that's what he is every day in practice. His motor, his talk, so to speak, is nonstop on and off the floor. So he's fun. He loves the game. He loves competing.

It was great to see him out there. And I thought he gave us a great spark off the bench. I thought the last couple of weeks his play has really improved as well. He's getting more confident in what he's doing and understanding it.

What I loved about him, he just plays hard. And that's number one. And that's what gets you production. That's what gets you on the floor, and he certainly showed that tonight.

Q. The bench in general seemed to have energy and give you that tonight. Has that been a point of emphasis? How happy were you with what you saw from that whole group?

DARIAN DEVRIES: Yeah, I thought the second group, the young guys, I thought for their first time out on the floor tonight, I thought they did a great job. They just came in and gave incredible effort.

I thought they played with pretty good composure, too, for their first time out. They were very confident in what they were doing. I was really happy with what that group brought.

Even to close the game there, I thought that last five minutes, they did some really good things. Just some effort plays that impact winning and losing. And they've really grasped onto that.

Q. What areas do you feel you guys are best at right now? And what areas do you look at and say, ah, we've got some work to do there?

DARIAN DEVRIES: Yeah, it was good to play somebody else just to get a little bit better idea than when you're going against one another sometimes.

So I thought our number one thing right now that we're not great at is just our talk in practice. We've just got to be more vocal. And some of that comes with just confidence and knowing what you're supposed to be doing, where you're supposed to be, all that stuff. That's, from June until we get to November, that's something that will get better and better as we go.

But that communication break down and stuff, you know, a lot of times it's not a lack of effort. It's just a lack of talk. So that's the stuff that we've got to clean up.

I thought our rebounding wasn't as good as we wanted it to be. We've talked to our team all summer long -- we want to be an elite offensive rebounding team. I didn't think we were quite there tonight.

And then defensive rebounding as well. We've got to secure the defensive glass. And we have enough bodies and size and athleticism that we should be a great defensive and offensive rebounding team. We're going to get it there.

But, again, I thought second half, especially the offensive glass, I thought they did a much better job. We were going and chasing balls down and that was good to see.

Q. Trevor Manhertz, what's his ceiling, what's his upside, how much better can he get?

DARIAN DEVRIES: Trevor's he's one of those guys, maybe on the first week you look at his size and think, well, he's got to bulk up and stuff. And, sure, he's got to do that.

But I tell you what, he does is he sticks his nose in there. And he's got an incredible feel for the game for such a young player. He understands where guys are going to be, the concepts of offense, the concepts of defense.

I think his upside is tremendous. I think you saw flashes of that tonight. Like, why we're so excited about him and some of the things he's been doing. He's got great length. Skill set is really good. So he's just scratching the surface, which is awesome.

Q. You guys had a trip, obviously, last offseason. I'm curious maybe what you learned from that experience last year. Are there things you've changed in terms of maybe how you approach that, what you want to get out of this compared to a season ago?

DARIAN DEVRIES: I think we have a lot more guys that -- young guys, especially. That's why tonight's game was so important too, just trying to get them experience and things.

But we also want to learn how to win together. We're going to Peru. We're going to play some good teams, at least traditionally good teams. We don't know a lot about them -- maybe on paper right now.

But I think we open up with Brazil. So typically Brazil's got a really good basketball team.

So our goal is to go win the games. And we expect some really good competition.

I know Baylor, when they went down there last year, they got beat in the final game. I think they had a couple of games maybe in that 8-to-10, 8-to-12 range. We're going to get challenged, and I want to see how our guys respond. That's what I love about it.

It should be a great trip. Unlike some of the trips, we do a little bit more kayaking and all that type of stuff. This will be a little bit more -- we'll try to have a little bit of fun and go hang out together as a group, but we're going to play five to six games in eight days. So it's going to be much more about basketball for this trip.

I'm excited to see kind of how you're growth goes along during the course of that week.

Q. Is your sense that you'll be playing older guys who have been together and played together as a team more than your group has? And how do you balance trying to figure out what you have with your team and winning?

DARIAN DEVRIES: I think we'll get a little bit of a mix. Certainly we won't play the game like a regular-season game in terms of rotation. We'll try to get a lot of guys in there, get them experience. Ultimately, that's still what this is about, is us continuing to grow and get better and get guys some time on the floor. So we want to do that first and for most.

But, even with that, our priority is still winning with that group, even though the rotations may be a lot bigger and guys won't play the extended minutes that they typically would.

We won't have Samet. Won't be able to play. So it will be a little shorthanded on the front court. We'll see how that shakes out, but you never know.

Q. (Indiscernible) the older guys?

DARIAN DEVRIES: I think they'll be a little bit older. We don't exactly know the makeup of the teams at all at this point, which in some ways is a good thing because it makes you rely on your defense.

There's no game prep. Once we get down there, we'll see teams play, and we'll do a little bit more of a scout from there just so our guys can learn how to start to take that stuff in and learn how to do that in the preparation.

But outside of that, we're playing -- and our offense and our defense. And it will be fun to see how the guys react, too, in the course of a game. They're icing a ball screen or hedging ball screens.

Even tonight, with the little bit of information we had, we thought they were going to hedge all the ball screens. Turned out they iced all the ball screens. So it was great to see our guys respond to that a little bit and make some adjustments on their own. And we're in the timeouts -- hey, here's how we want to try to attack it.

And I thought for the most part, the guys did a pretty good job overall. I love the unselfishness of the group tonight. I thought we really shared the ball. We didn't always connect on the backside of it. But I thought the ball movement and stuff was pretty good tonight.

Q. You guys are used to representing Indiana University, but representing your country is something special that all athletes talk about that is a little bit different. How did it feel tonight to wear the "United States," to hear the National Anthem, and then the USA chants towards the end of the game?

DARIAN DEVRIES: Yeah, that's part of the reason we wanted to do this. Like, how many times do you have an opportunity to wear a USA jersey? That's pretty cool, pretty special.

Even when those guys put the jerseys on in the locker room tonight, it's like it's got a little different meaning to it when you've got USA. You know, obviously when we're playing in our Indiana jerseys, we're representing Indiana and our fans. Now it feels like you're representing the whole country.

I know it's not the Olympics, but it still feels a little bit different. So we're playing for something, and we know that is ultimately why we wanted to do this. I think it's a cool opportunity for our program.

Q. With the volume of practice you guys had compared to last year, do you feel like you're ahead of where you were? Does that change, once this is all said and done and the tournament's done, do you feel like you'll make changes to kind of what you do in the fall before the season, because you had more practice time? Does that change things? Does that have a ripple effect?

DARIAN DEVRIES: Yeah, I think it definitely does. When we get back July 28th or whatever, we have about a month, a little less, where the guys will go home and stuff. But that will give us time to reflect, A, on the game, the practices, and really look at what do we've got to focus in on in September, October.

You know, like the offensive rebounding. I haven't had a lot of teams where we prioritized offensive rebounding. So that's something that we're putting a lot of time and effort into with this group, because I think this group could be a really good offensive rebounding team. We have enough size and length, like we talked about, to go do that.

And then the lineups are a little bit different as well. So with Aiden and Samet out there, there's different types of things that we can try to focus on where maybe we didn't have those type of rosters in previous years.

So those are things that we're doing a lot of experimenting to see what guys individually are good at, what as a group that we're good at. That's what the summertime is for. And I think we've been able to get a lot of stuff and look at a lot of different things throughout the course of the summer.

I'm excited to see how that plays out in the games, and then ultimately, when we get back in the fall, to really lock in on what we want to prioritize outside of the things we already talked about.

Q. Following up on that. You talked about this group being a little bit younger than last year's team but some of the same challenges in terms of roster turnover and sort of pulling guys together. Have you handled the summer any differently with this group than maybe learning from the experience of a year ago of trying to adapt to a lot of personalities and a lot of different guys' games, and having all this practice time, have you as a staff handled this summer maybe any differently than you did last summer, not the tour or the games, but all the practice time?

DARIAN DEVRIES: I wouldn't say it was a ton different, other than focusing on the things that maybe we're prioritizing more than we did with last year's group. So the offensive rebounding, those type of things. We're able to do more film study this year with the extra time that I think has been beneficial as well.

Outside of that, like you said, it's a little bit of some experimenting defensively, offensively, with switching, those type of things, 1 through 3. You've got two bigs out there a lot of the time. And when you saw Trent's a little more of the 6-7, you know, run the floor, do that type of thing. So there's different lineups where we can do different things. Trapping the post.

All the things that we've looked at, hey, here are some holes, deficiencies from last year's team. Some of them apply, some of them don't. It's a different roster. So some of the things maybe we weren't great at, we've got to make sure that this group is really good at, and then we've also got to make sure that we put this group in the best position that we can for them to be successful.