Bloomington has a new standard, and it came from the football field. After Curt Cignetti’s team ran through the season and grabbed a national championship, the question hanging over Assembly Hall was obvious: Can the basketball program keep up?
Darian DeVries isn’t dodging the question. He’s leaning into it.
“We have the same expectations,” DeVries told Hoops HQ. “Our fans want to win. We want to win the Big Ten championship. We want to play deep into the tournament. That’s our goal every year, and we’re looking forward to chasing down those goals.”
Let’s be real for a second. Indiana basketball is still Indiana basketball. The brand carries weight. The banners hang. But the football team just flipped the script and gave the whole athletic department a new bar to clear. DeVries knows it. He said the expectations here are “very high” and he’s not pretending otherwise.
The roster is coming together through the transfer portal, which is how basically everyone builds a team now. DeVries is heading into year two after an 18-14 debut. That’s not bad, but it’s not what Indiana fans expect. They remember the Bob Knight years. They remember the 1987 title. And now they just watched football get a ring.
Year two feels different for DeVries
DeVries sounded like a coach who actually learned something from that first season. Not always a given in this business.
“We’ve gone through the league for a year, so you have a really good feel there as well,” he said. “We’re heading into year two in a much better position as you’re getting ready for that second run of Big Ten play. I like how the roster came together. I think the staff’s got a really good feel now for what we need to do to be at a high, high level in this league.”
You can hear the confidence in how he talks about the staff. That first year was about figuring things out on the fly. Now they’ve seen the Big Ten grind up close. They know which venues are loudest, which officials let them play, which teams will try to punk them on the road.
And the fans? They’re ready. Assembly Hall is one of those places that turns into a problem for visiting teams when the Hoosiers are good. DeVries said the fans are “all about it and excited about it.” That’s code for: get this right, and they’ll carry you.
But talk is cheap in June. The portal classes look solid on paper. The staff seems aligned. The football championship created a new energy on campus, and DeVries is smart enough to ride that wave instead of fighting it. The Hoosiers went 18-14 last year. The goal now is to make sure nobody remembers that record a year from now.
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