IU basketball has 0 players on its roster, leaving coach Darian DeVries with total rebuild

It doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise the Indiana basketball roster has flipped itself, but it is still shocking to see that no players from the 2024-25 season are scheduled to return in Darian DeVries’ first season.

Both Bryson Tucker and Myles Rice entered the transfer portal Friday, marking zero scholarship players on the Hoosiers roster. For all intents and purposes, it marks the end of the Mike Woodson era. And, even in the early days of the transfer portal, it’s hard for one to wrap his mind around the idea of no players on the roster, as is also the case with Indiana State women’s basketball though the Sycamores didn’t have a coaching change.

DeVries spent his first week as IU coach gauging where things stood in his acquired locker room, even meeting with graduating players. He now stands, like Will Smith in the episode of “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” in a room empty, but it’s filled with hope like a homebuyer envisioning their future fitting into new digs.

Rival coaches told IndyStar that the makeup of his teams mirror him, as player and coach, with a competitive streak. An important note made by athletic director Scott Dolson when introducing DeVries as coach was his record, a winning one, in close games. Woodson’s teams last season folded in closing time (see, Maryland or Purdue) which denied them a NCAA tournament bid.

Like the behind-the-scenes work DeVries is doing to lay the foundation for what he hopes is a successful and winning run at IU — that’s all he knows in his tenures at Drake and West Virginia (10-win improvement) — he can use the transfer portal to fill the roster just as quickly. And while the portal can have different phases in which players enter and commit, April 7 is an important date to have NIL agreements finalized before having to go through a clearinghouse when the likely approval of the House vs. NCAA settlement is pushed through.