Coach Q&A: Darian DeVries reacts to Indiana's win over Penn State

Indiana basketball head coach Darian DeVries spoke with the media Tuesday following Indiana’s blowout 113-72 win over Penn State.

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. When you see Lamar have an outing like that, what do you think drove that?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Like I said a few times, he’s had a couple nights where he’s struggled. I was never worried about that. He’s that level of a shooter. He’s not going to do 44 every night. He has that confidence. He puts in the work every day.

It was fun to see him kind of get loose and kind of showcase all that work he puts in.

Q. Is it get back to basics in practice? What did you do to refocus them?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, we had gone back here after the Minnesota game and looked at some of the offense, what caused it. There wasn’t a lot of movement and things. As we went backwards looking at some games earlier in the season compared to now, it stood out pretty good.

We put a ton of time here this last week on just getting more actions, more movement. Sometimes you can’t always do that. People deny. You can’t just throw the ball from side to side. At some point you have to still be able to go make a play.

I thought the guys did a really good job tonight keeping the ball as we like to say ‘hot’, keeping it hot, keeping it moving. Player and ball movement I thought was really good tonight.

Q. You talk about Lamar’s ability to do this. How helpful was it for you and the team for him to have a night like?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, I think it’s great for him. I think even for really good shooters, sometimes if you overthink it, you can start to pressure a little bit in your own mind.

When he gets one or two down, you can just see it was a relief for him tonight. Then after that it was just fun (smiling).

So yeah, we need him. He’s an important piece, especially for our offense. He draws a lot of gravity for that reason.

When we can get him going, then we get one of those other guys going, you can get two of ’em going on the same night, that’s where offensively you can have a night like this.

Q. To that end, how important is it for five different guys in double figures, a couple of down nights shooting coming into this, how important is a night like this where they feed off a teammate and just everybody gets to feel a little bit more confident?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, I think it’s always good for confidence individually, collectively as a team.

It’s funny how that works. Sometimes one guy gets it going, everybody feels like they’re hot. The Louisville game, I thought we had better movement and things. We still got up to 80 points. Some of those looks we just didn’t hit ’em, knock ’em down the way we would have liked.

It was nice to see tonight 30 assists to go with it. I think that’s a big piece of it, too. Like we talked about all year, you have 30 assists, usually that means we were getting pretty clean, good looks, the kind of shots that we wanted.

Q. What led to the lineup change tonight? How do you feel like Reed responded?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Lineup change, like I told Reed and Sam, it wasn’t anything more than we just wanted to try to create a spark. Wasn’t anything negative towards either one of them. We wanted to take a look at it.

I thought Reed responded great, like I knew he would. It freed him up a little bit. Coming off the bench, maybe just a chance to process as the game’s going. Allows us with Sam a little more physicality to start the game, then Reed comes in and utilizes some of his speed and things.

He handled it great. I thought he did a nice job coming off the bench for us tonight. Very aggressive.

Q. Lamar earlier said you told him tonight was going to be his night where he would go off. What led to your thinking of that?

DARIAN DeVRIES: I don’t know. I think I tell him that all the time, though (smiling).

Yeah, we just spent a little time just talking to him about, like, Dude, just relax, shoot, have fun, let that thing fly.

Again, when he see as couple go down, you can just tell he was feeling good about it.

Q. Did you realize as Lamar was racking up the points that he was closing in on the threes record or the building scoring record? If you did realize that, was there any emphasis trying to get him that record before you pulled him out?

DARIAN DeVRIES: I really had no idea what the record was. But based on the fans, he was close to something (smiling). Yeah, apparently he broke a lot of ’em, so good for him.

The only thing I knew was the 40 points. Whether it was a record or not, just that’s a pretty cool milestone to get in a game. It was cool to see him get it.

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