Coach Q&A: Darian DeVries reacts to Indiana's win over Incarnate Word

Indiana basketball head coach Darian DeVries spoke with the media Sunday evening following Indiana’s win over Incarnate Word.

Below is his full Q&A, as well as a transcript of the conversation (to be added once it became available)

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Q. Darian, from your perspective, and I recognize you’ll know better once you watch the film, but what were they doing that got you out of your rhythm offensively early, and like where does your team need to go to find that again in a game when you can’t get the reset of going back into practice, back into preparation, but you got to find it as a group in real time?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, I can’t say for sure what it was. I think them starting out in the zone gets you a little bit out of your normal rhythm as an offense and we got a little stagnant there.

Then when they went to their man I thought we did a decent job at times, but the ball definitely just didn’t move the way that we’d like it to tonight. So we ended up with a lot more just the ball stuck in one guy’s hands and a lot more one-on-one tonight, and that’s not really what we’re designed to do as an offense.

We’re at our best when the ball is moving and we’re getting cuts and getting it side to side. I can’t say for sure without watching the film. I felt like we had some good threes that we missed, but my guess is a lot of those threes weren’t as clean as we’re used to getting because the ball wasn’t moving the way we want it to to get the high quality shots.

Q. Kind of big picture, when you have a 5-24 night, is it something where you go, okay, we got to really study this, or do you go, okay, we really struggled and flush it and move on?

DARIAN DeVRIES: It’s both. 30-some game season, we have good shooters, we’re built to make threes, so on a night where we don’t shoot it particularly well you got find way a way to win. I’m glad we were able to do that.

There is plenty to look at as to why it happened, but the reality is you’re going to have off shooting nights. It’s just going to happen. Tonight was one of them.

That’s where you got to really rely on your defense and rebounding and taking care of the ball. I just thought the first half the reason our lead built up even though we weren’t shooting it well was our defense was really good. Held them to 20% from the field.

The second half you see an 18 point lead evaporate because they shoot 54%. So that’s the learning opportunity. It’s a 40 minute game. That’s something that we’ll certainly take advantage of. Like I said, I like learning after wins. That’s much better, but there is a lot of positives there, too. You know, we’ll take it for what it is and learn from it and move on.

Q. You mentioned the defense. What was the difference? Like you said, held them to 20%. They cut down the 19-point to five or six. What was the difference you saw as they cut that lead?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, I thought they got into our paint to start; a few mid-ranges and stuff like that as well. Those are shots that I wouldn’t say we give up, but we are designed to at least get some challenge one of those.

They came off a little cleaner with a few of those than we would like, and then they made a few threes. We gave up a few baseline drives and now you’re in rotation and they’re spraying it out the backside.

Again, it always starts on the ball and the connectivity behind it usually is where it’s at. You have to be good on the ball first and build it out from there.

Q. Sam led you guys in scoring tonight. Tucker said you guys don’t win this game without him. How important has he become to this team so early this season?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Sam is playing great. He was one of the guys tonight that really brought some good energy, some good physicality. There was about a handful of possessions in the second half where he switched on a guard and guarded about as well as anybody.

I thought he was traffic. I thought had a really good night.

Q. Their defensive profile didn’t look that great on paper coming into this game. You mentioned the zone. Did they throw a bunch of new wrinkles at you guys that you maybe didn’t see on film?

DARIAN DeVRIES: I mean, the 1-3-1 zone, you know, we looked at it. They’d done it just a couple times. They did it a couple times last year. They had spent much more, a majority of their time on 2-3 zone that they did a lot against Colorado State. Their other games played all man.

So we worked and talked about the 1-3-1 zone, how we were going to attack it. We spent a lot more time on the 2-3 zone and then their man stuff, but early in the year as you different things.

But we certainly knew they had it in their package. But I thought the guys did, for the most part fine against it. Again, it just slowed us down a little bit.

Q. There was the point in the second half I think where it seemed like you just wanted mor energy. Did you feel like you guys had that juice you wanted tonight?

DARIAN DeVRIES: I didn’t think we were — maybe it’s — sometimes with teams, even veteran teams when you’re not making shots your energy isn’t where you want it to be. That’s fighting human nature and that’s what we can’t be.

That’s where the learning comes in tonight on it’s not going perfectly for us as an offense. We are missing the shots we normally make. You got to continue to fight. In the first half we did. We guarded them well.

So that’s something that we’ll take and go, like, hey, you built this lead because your defense was still really good. That energy is something we have to play with. We got to be a very spirited, physical, tough-minded group for 40 minutes every night. That’s how we’re going to win.

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