Indiana head coach Mike Woodson stepped down after the program missed out on the NCAA Tournament, and the Hoosiers quickly moved on to another head coach who found himself on the wrong side of the bubble; West Virginia’s Darian DeVries.
DeVries spent just one year in Morgantown after leading the Drake Bulldogs for six seasons, and the Hoosiers reportedly honed in on him midway through the year. However, before DeVries was officially hired, the Hoosiers were rumored to be interested in DeVries’s successor in Des Moines, Ben McCollum.
McCollum spent the previous 15 years building a Division 2 powerhouse at Northwest Missouri State, leading the program to four D2 national championships over that stretch. Then, to cap off his first year as a D1 head coach on Thursday night in Wichita, Kansas, McCollum did something DeVries never has. McCollum led the Bulldogs to an NCAA Tournament win, defeating No. 6 seed Missouri 67-57 in the West Region.
The win was McCollum’s 31st of the season, three more than DeVries best year at Drake. DeVries helped the Bulldogs punch their ticket to The Big Dance three times, including in back-to-back seasons before leaving for West Virginia, but he never found his way out of the first round, and now he’s leading a program with a storied history and championship expectations. Maybe McCollum is better equipped for the job, and maybe Indiana should’ve waited to see how McCollum’s season ended before making its decision.
Now, there is an advantage to hiring a coach this early in the cycle. It’s the reason that Jai Lucas left Jon Scheyer’s coaching staff at Duke to get to Miami and why Will Wade has been so open about his intentions to head to NC State after McNeese’s tournament stay eventually comes to an end. Players have already begun to enter the transfer portal and more names will flood into it as teams get eliminated from the postseason this week. It’s a massive advantage to roster construction and the portal has led to very quick turnarounds like that of Pat Kelsey at Louisville or Dusty May at Michigan. Still, sometimes patience is a virtue, and after four underwhelming seasons under Woodson, Indiana can’t afford to make the wrong hire this time.
Either coach would be unproven by the Hoosier’s lofty standard, but McCollum quickly discovered more tournament success than DeVries and would have a better star player to bring with him to Bloomington.
DeVries will almost certainly be joined by his son, Tucker, who starred at Drake before missing most of the 2024-25 season at West Virginia with an injury and playing only eight games. DeVries was the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year in each of the previous two seasons, but his two-game tournament resume is nothing like that of Bennett Stirtz.
Stirtz followed McCollum from Missouri Valley State and immediately replaced DeVries as the MVC Player of the Year, joining Indiana State legend three-time NBA MVP Larry Bird as the only player in conference history to post a season with 600+ points, 180+ assists, and 70+ steals. And unlike Tucker DeVries, he came up big on the biggest stage.
In last season’s first-round matchup against Washington State, DeVries went 6-18 from the field for 14 points, and in the first round of the 2023 NCAA Tournament, DeVries was dreadful, shooting 1-13 from the field and finishing with just three points. In Stirtz’s first trip to March Madness, he stared down SEC competition and was easily the best player on the floor. The All-American honorable mention went 8-11 from the field and 3-3 from beyond the arc for 21 points with 4 assists and played all 40 minutes.
You don’t hire a head coach for the transfer he’d likely bring to campus for one season, but it does add to the case for hiring McCollum. You also don’t hire a coach because of one March Madness victory, but McCollum’s season has been so much more than that, and so much more impressive than DeVries missing an at-large bid with West Virginia.
McCollum would be a high-risk hire. With just one season of Division 1 experience, he may need to stay in Des Moines for another year before making the jump to power conference basketball, but maybe, just maybe, Indiana made its decision a little too soon.