The Short List: Darian DeVries

If the list is one name, this is the guy.

Iowa has entered the market for its fourth men’s basketball coach since 1999. How does Beth Goetz go about handling her first major-sport coaching search as athletic director? Where does Iowa fit into the grand scheme of major college basketball at the moment? Does this portend a revamp of the entire program? LET’S TALK ABOUT IT.

This is my third basketball coaching search since I started writing about Iowa athletics in fall 2006. There has been one constant of those two searches: Gary Barta. That meant there was lots of melodrama, rumor and innuendo. Neither Todd Lickliter nor Fran McCaffery were really on the fans’ radar when they were hired, mostly because there were other candidates with a more logical candidacy.

We’ll know soon whether Beth Goetz learned all of the bad habits of her predecessor, because there might not be a more logical candidate for Iowa basketball to come along this century than Darian DeVries. His availability and interest remain in question, but if DeVries wants the Iowa job, he’s the co-favorite to get the position at worst.

Darian DeVries is a member of one of Iowa’s most prominent sporting families, the Aplington DeVrieses. He’s the older brother of former Iowa defensive end Jared DeVries and father of two-time Missouri Valley Player of the year Tucker DeVries (more on that in a minute). He played basketball at Northern Iowa from 1993 through 1998 for coach Eldon Miller, and jumped immediately into college coaching as a grad manager, then assistant, at Creighton under Dana Altman. When Altman left for Oregon in 2010, DeVries stayed on to assist Greg McDermott. In all, he spent twenty seasons in Omaha.

In 2018, Niko Medved left Drake for Colorado State after one season in charge. Drake had been stuck in a fifty-year cycle of mediocrity. The Bulldogs had won 20 games and made the NCAA Tournament once since 1971. Medved’s jump to another mid-major program with a limited history was proof of how far Drake had fallen.

Drake hired DeVries, and the effect was immediate. In his first season in charge, DeVries ushered the Bulldogs to a 24-10 record and Mo Valley regular season co-championship. In his third year, Drake was 26-5 and returning to the NCAA Tournament field for the first time since 2008. They went back twice more over the next three seasons. In his six years at Drake, DeVries posted 20 or more wins in all six seasons, finished in the Top 2 of the Missouri Valley five times, and won the conference tournament twice. DeVries posted a 150-55 record at Drake, with a 78-33 mark in the MVC. It was the longest sustained period of success in the history of the school.