Indiana basketball got its man this week, bringing a winding coaching search to a close by announcing the hiring of former West Virginia head man Darian DeVries.
It's not hard to see why he was on the top of the Hoosiers' wish list: The Iowa native has won just about everywhere he's been as a head coach, from Drake to WVU, and the fact that he'll be bringing his all-conference son Tucker along with him is simply icing on the cake. IU fans are understandably wary of getting their hopes up after watching so many promising candidates fall short since the departure of Bob Knight, but it's easy to get excited about this new era of Hoosier basketball.
But while Indiana is ready to welcome DeVries with open arms, he's leaving some very hard feelings in his wake.
West Virginia connects the dots after Darian DeVries bolts for Indiana
It's always tough to lose a head coach, especially after just one year in town. But this goes beyond the usual rejection: West Virginia fans are furious with DeVries in the aftermath of this news, and not just because he left them for a different (or, depending on your perspective, better) job.
The Mountaineers aren't upset that DeVries left. They're upset with how it went down, and what it might mean about the season their team just endured.
WVU fell just short of the NCAA Tournament in DeVries' first year in Morgantown, fading down the stretch as Tucker was lost for the year with a shoulder injury. But DeVries' comments during his introductory press conference at Indiana call into question that version of events; was Tucker actually as hurt as he and his dad wanted everyone to believe, or was he being held out in anticipation of a deal with IU that was months in the making?
Here it is…. Darian DeVries openly admitting this was done during the season. There’s no denying they flat out held Tucker back to save him for next season at Indiana. pic.twitter.com/SqqifxH8Pi
— Ben Booth (@TheBenBoothShow) March 19, 2025
Of course, this is hardly a smoking gun. The reality is that allowing DeVries to "focus on the season" with West Virginia doesn't nail down a specific timeline, and has more to do with how coaching searches operate in 2025 than anything else. Indiana almost certainly identified DeVries as a top candidate once it became clear that the Mike Woodson era was going to work out, and they almost certainly sent feelers out to him and his representatives.
But again, that's hardly incriminating; that's just the cost of doing business. The idea that DeVries helped his son fake the severity of his shoulder injury in order to preserve an extra year of eligibility just in case Indiana offered him the job beggars belief. The timeline just doesn't add up: When Tucker went down, the Hoosiers still had hope for a make-or-break year under Woodson, and it wasn't until the new year that things went well and truly south and the end became apparent.
You can understand why West Virginia feels hurt here; no program takes kindly to being viewed as a stepping stone, and DeVries probably could've conducted himself a little better. But he also put together quite the turnaround job in year one in Morgantown, and Indiana isn't just any job for a coach from the Midwest.