Indiana men’s basketball’s first season under Darian DeVries came to an end when the Hoosiers didn’t receive a bid for the 2026 NCAA Tournament. The Hoosiers finished 18-14 overall and 9-11 in Big Ten play, with a late collapse ending their March Madness hopes.
We’ll be recapping and analyzing DeVries’ first season in a few different ways from individual players to other lineups and trends, starting with players.
Reed Bailey
- Final statline: 8.3 PTS, 3.4 REB, 1.1 AST
- Role: Starting C – bench C
Stats provided by KenPom or CBB Analytics.
Bailey transferred to Indiana last offseason
after spending three seasons at Davidson, being the Wildcats’ featured player as a junior in 2024-25, averaging 18.8 points, 6.1 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game. He had a heavy usage rate and led the Wildcats in assist rate with 25.3
There was speculation at the time as to where Indiana would play Bailey, at power forward or center. He didn’t have the usual physicality present among Big Ten centers and had spent time at power forward with Davidson. Ultimately, Bailey ended up starting at center until early December when he was replaced there by Sam Alexis.
He wasn’t starting anymore, but Bailey’s minutes remained the same as Indiana played either he or Alexis at center based on matchups and who was having the better night.
Bailey ended up struggling quite a bit, especially on offense.
Bailey was elite in one category that carried over from Davidson: drawing fouls. He drew 6.7 fouls per 40 minutes and had a free throw rate of 109.6, putting him in the 99th percentile nationally. He converted on 75.7% of his attempts from the line.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of other things about Bailey failed to translate. He was a capable 3-point shooter on low volume with the Wildcats but took just four attempts from deep total with the Hoosiers this past season. As seen above, he struggled mightily on offense under the rim. Last but not least, the passing he showed at Davidson as a junior didn’t translate at all at Indiana.
It seems like Indiana tried to make Bailey’s passing work at least, he went without an assist in just one of the Hoosiers’ first seven games before struggling significantly against Minnesota and Louisville, just before he was sent to the bench against Penn State. He had just three games with multiple assists after this, including five against UCLA, arguably his best all-around performance of the season.
Inserting some opinion here, Bailey’s passing might’ve been more present if he’d been in at power forward rather than center with time to survey the defense from the perimeter rather than being relied on in the paint, something Tucker DeVries took advantage of at that spot. He drove the ball quite a bit at Davidson but took on much, much more of an off-ball role with Indiana.
As a bit of a non-basketball note, Bailey drew quite a bit of ire from some fans for his play and I don’t believe it was fair. He is, roughly, the same player he was at Davidson just scaled back with better talent around him. He struggled some around the rim with the Wildcats as well, that was to be expected. It’d be one thing if he was loafing around on the court but that just wasn’t the case, he gave pretty clear effort and played within his role on the team. His lapses weren’t necessarily greater than what you’d expect out of most basketball players.
What was missing for Bailey to be a more impactful player, I think, is a true center next to him. Indiana tried this as a last ditch effort against Ohio State in the regular season finale and Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament, but there were clear chemistry issues between him and Alexis. It was fair to try something different and maybe that lineup would’ve been more viable if another center, like Josh Harris, was available, but it wasn’t.
