When the roster was built through the portal last year a concern voiced was if the mid-major all stars would be able to shoot their way to success. As the season progressed the shortcomings of the team surfaced a number of times. 

Good to hear DeVries acknowledge the greater athleticism and physicality of Big 10 basketball in your article but as a collegiate coach he should have been aware of these realities last year. If he was clueless, IU basketball is in for a tough road.

I'll cut him some slack as I don't know all the factors involved in last Aprils roster building efforts. We'll soon see the direction the recruiting takes in a few weeks.

Thanks for the article. Gives us some names to identify when all the portal chaos soon takes place.

@bigmike I just can't fathom that he was clueless on it.  MANY posters on this board picked up on the various needs we were lacking, early on in the portal process.  Not to hurt all "our" feelings, but we don't know jack shit about building a college basketball team or roster, compared to CDD... Big Ten, Big 12, Valley... whatever.  He knows more about what is needed than we do.

For whatever reason, he wasn't able to do it.  Maybe he focused on shooters and skill too much early, thinking he could come back and get size and athleticism?  Maybe he didn't have the money?  Lots of possibilities.  But I just cant entertain one of them being, he just didn't know he was going to need them.  

Posted by: @iunorth

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@bigmike I just can't fathom that he was clueless on it.  MANY posters on this board picked up on the various needs we were lacking, early on in the portal process.  Not to hurt all "our" feelings, but we don't know jack shit about building a college basketball team or roster, compared to CDD... Big Ten, Big 12, Valley... whatever.  He knows more about what is needed than we do.

For whatever reason, he wasn't able to do it.  Maybe he focused on shooters and skill too much early, thinking he could come back and get size and athleticism?  Maybe he didn't have the money?  Lots of possibilities.  But I just cant entertain one of them being, he just didn't know he was going to need them.  

The prior IU basketball coach set the low bar for portal recruiting as the strategy was to throw bags of cash at players with high recruiting star ratings. Team fit will be a major segment of DeVries roster building effort. 

We all think we know. But could any of us actually do it? That is the difference. It's much easier to think you know than to actually do. Then you find out that all of your assumptions were just a little bit off. Think about whatever field you work in or know deeply. How many times do people get moved up and they need to adjust to the new demands and pressures of the job before they are really effective. They "know" what they need to do but they need to learn how to actually do it.

@ams66 DeVries coached in the BigXII last year. Yes, he has spent most of his career at the mid-major level, but this wasn't like throwing a student teacher into an AP classroom on day one and saying here you teach em.

Is there an adjustment period? Yes, but everyone knows the Big Ten is a meat grinder. He got the data he needs and it's time for him to get to work on fixing what needs to be fixed.