Indiana men’s basketball head coach Darian DeVries addressed the media on Wednesday afternoon following the Hoosiers’ 96-68 exhibition win over Butler and ahead of their exhibition matchup against UNC this coming Sunday.
He addressed several questions from. Here’s a few takeaways from his remarks:
On Markus Burton as a scorer and fascilitator
Former Notre Dame guard and Indiana Mr. Basketball winner Markus Burton was one of Indiana’s prized additions from the transfer portal this offseason. He functioned a bit more as a scorer than a distributor
in the backcourt with the Fighting Irish averaging 17.5, 21.3 and 18.5 points per game and 4.3, 3 and 3.7 assists per game during his three seasons in South Bend.
DeVries was asked about balancing those roles of scoring and passing with Indiana this season and said the staff has urged him to be himself and stay aggressive as a player.
“He knows his capabilities as an offensive scorer and we don’t ever want to take that away from him,” DeVries said. “I think he’s a very willing distributor too.”
DeVries added that there were times that the staff felt Burton was passing too much through the Hoosiers’ summer trip to Peru and they emphasized that they want him to stay aggressive in hunting for opportunities to get points on the board.
On scheduling more challenging exhibition matchups
Exhibitions are from from new to the college basketball landscape, with programs playing closed and open door games during the preseason for decades. Those open door exhibitions were, for the longest time, largely made up of lower-division teams.
More and more programs are scheduling fellow high-major teams ahead of the season with Indiana already having played Butler and now getting set to play UNC with a matchup against Western Kentucky to follow. Asked about this, DeVries said Indiana didn’t get much of a true look at its strengths and weaknesses during its trip to Peru and is seeking more usable information in these exhibition games.
“Kinda wanna find out some of our holes before we get into real games and they start to go in the win-loss column,” DeVries said.
DeVries named transition defense and fouling as points of concern coming out of the Butler matchup, with each coming up in practice before showing on the court against another opponent. He called these exhibitions learning opportunities for the coaching staff ahead of regular season play.
On this team’s halfcourt defense
Indiana struggled on defense last year, DeVries’ first leading the program, in large part due to a lack of size in the frontcourt that forced the staff to commit more effort toward guarding the perimeter.
This year, Indiana’s defense is anchored by a pair of 7-footers in Samet Yigitoglu at center and Aiden Sherrell at power forward. Asked about that he sees from this group defensively, DeVries said the challenge lies on the perimeter with a general lack of size in the backcourt and a need to be aggressive there without fouling.
“I think we have some room to grow there,” DeVries said. “But I am excited about what I’ve seen in the last two to three weeks where guys are really starting to pick up their gaps and being able to protect one another and really relying on our team defense. For us to be really good, that’s gonna have to be elite.”
DeVries noted that part of Indiana’s goal this season will be to improve on its defense along the perimeter ahead of its strong rim protection from the frontcourt.
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