BLOOMINGTON — Assembly Hall enjoyed Darian DeVries’ official debut Wednesday night, maybe more than he did.
DeVries admitted postgame, following a 98-51 win over Alabama A&M, that he “didn’t get much sleep [Tuesday] night.” There’s always, he said, nervous excitement before each new season’s first game. That this was his first — at least among those that count — leading a program DeVries knows carries national championship ambitions will have only contributed to that.
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“You’re just anxious,” he said, “to get out there and go play.”
But whatever nerves he felt should’ve been soothed, certainly by his Indiana basketball team’s performance, but also by the atmosphere that rose to meet the Hoosiers (1-0) as Wednesday night wore on.
At the risk of casual oversimplification, after years of dull, frustrating basketball, there was something to be said for the game this building loves just looking fun again.
DeVries’ team played the way he promised it would. The Hoosiers pressured the ball on defense and pushed it in transition. They shared it as ceaselessly as they did instinctively, Indiana’s adidas basketball zipping in and out, left to right and back again, searching breathlessly for the gaps that inevitably appeared in an overwhelmed defense.
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IU shot 10 of 24 from behind the 3-point line. The Hoosiers made all 16 free throws. They finished with 23 assists to just 11 turnovers, on 36 made baskets.
Five different players scored in double figures.
“We’re all new here,” Davidson transfer Reed Bailey said. “We just wanted to come out and be able to show what we can do.”
The talent gap alone will have always made this kind of result likely. Alabama A&M (1-1) arrived in Bloomington fully aware of the part it was meant to play in the start of the Darian DeVries era.
What excited Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall was not just the points or the passes, the rebounds or the assists. It was, very basically, the basketball itself.
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Newly arrived creatively. Experience. Court awareness. Unspoken connection. Veteran nous.
“We’ve got a group that has a really good IQ and feel, and for a group that hasn’t been together very long, they really play well off of each other,” DeVries said. “They’re just out there playing. I think that’s allowed them to play fast and really trust their instincts.”
Not just a renewed emphasis, for example, on the 3-point line — for too long this program’s enemy within. But a desire and an ability to take the kinds of shots only shooters see, and only shooters make.
Already, Assembly Hall is falling in love with Lamar Wilkerson (19 points, four made 3s), the hyperconfident shooter/scorer transferred in from Sam Houston State.
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“He’s one of those guys you’ve got to kick out of the gym,” DeVries said, “because he’s in there so much.”
There’s DeVries’ own son, Tucker, who eclipsed 2,000 career points Wednesday night, beginning what will be a brief but — he hopes — eventful Indiana career by marking an important milestone.
Those two give Darian DeVries instant offense, unshakeable confidence and steady experience at all times. They provide IU quick-strike capability. Each can score his team into the kind of run that flips a game on its head.
Insider: It finally counts: Likes, dislikes from Indiana basketball’s first win in Darian DeVries era
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There were other encouraging debuts. Because they were nearly all debuts.
Tayton Conerway finished with 14 points and five assists, his defense as smothering as his passing was impressive. There might not have been a louder moment inside Indiana’s old arena Wednesday night than the alley oop Conerway bounced off the backboard in transition for Bailey (game-high 21 points) in the second half.
Alabama A&M coach Donte’ Jackson did the Hoosiers a favor in that moment, calling a stop-the-bleeding timeout immediately following the Conerway-to-Bailey highlight-reel dunk.
It allowed this Indiana team a moment to bask in the affections of its new fanbase. But it also allowed that fanbase to stand and soak in the potential of a team to get excited about again.
Basketball holds a distinct place in the firmament of American sports for exactly the reasons on show Wednesday night. It’s a game played as much on instinct and individualism, as it is on rigid fundamental instruction.
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The best moments in basketball are rarely scripted. They do not begin on a whiteboard, but more simply in the mind and movement of a player reacting to what’s happening around him with an answer two steps ahead of the question.
Across far too much of the last decade — not all of it, but certainly too much of it — Indiana has been, frankly, a hard watch.
Not just because the Hoosiers could not seem to break their fascination with robotic, repetitive basketball, but because the style and the results so often went exhaustingly hand in hand.
We won’t know for some time whether DeVries’ arrival, which felt on Wednesday night like a long, satisfying breath of fresh air, will reverse those results. But on, to use a niche industry term, vibes alone, Assembly Hall was happy to embrace something new and undeniably more exciting.
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After the game, while DeVries spoke with Robbie Hummel on the Big Ten Network, his players took a lap of the Assembly Hall floor, high-fiving and handshaking fans. A way of saying thank you on what everyone hopes will be the first night of a long and successful coaching tenure.
It won’t mean a lot in the grand scheme. DeVries, like all coaches before him, will succeed or fail on his results, full stop.
But, as with so much of what those fans watched with excitement on Wednesday night, here was just one more little moment that suggested things around Indiana might be different, and might be better.
Mostly, for one night anyway, they were just more fun. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying that.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU basketball was fun to watch against Alabama A&M, Darian DeVries first win
