Indiana
Darian DeVries: From The Farm To The Bright Lights Of Indiana
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories on Darian DeVries’ background.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Aplington, Iowa, isn’t a place you will likely pass through by accident. To get to the city of 1,116 in north central Iowa, you have to try pretty hard.
The nearest main highway is U.S. Route 20, 10 miles away from Aplington. There are two exits that could lead you there, but neither of them mention Aplington as the main city on the exit signs. Aplington gets relegated to a smaller sign that advertises its existence, kind of the highway department version of making all-conference honorable mention.
Aplington is a typical small Iowa farm town. It sits on the banks of Beaver Creek, an old granger railroad line survives intact, and it has a nicely kept downtown like most upper Midwestern bergs. There is no stoplight, but there is a Casey’s gas station – this is Iowa after all.
As far as where Indiana basketball coach Darian DeVries grew up, you’re not even there yet. Just outside Aplington is the DeVries family farm.
“We had cattle, we had pigs – they’re not as much fun – we had a few horses here and there, sometimes some chickens, but for the most part it was cattle and pigs. It was a smaller farm, I think it was about 80 acres. Corn, beans, hay, all the fun stuff,” Darian DeVries said in an interview with Hoosiers On SI.
The DeVries family farm is the genesis of what Indiana is getting in its new basketball coach. Because if Darian DeVries has one characteristic that guides him, it’s his work ethic honed from growing up on a farm.
That work ethic has taken DeVries very far indeed.
Darian is the oldest of Vern and Marge DeVries’ five children. The work ethic instilled in all of the DeVries children served them well, especially when it came to sports.
“My work ethic has come from my childhood, no question, with my parents and my upbringing there,” DeVries said.
“I grew up on the farm, so you’re kind of instilled with a work ethic with everything you have to do to make the farm go with livestock and stuff like that,” DeVries said.
Darian wasn’t the only DeVries child to achieve at a high level. Darian’s best known sibling is Jared DeVries, an All-American defensive end for Iowa who played 12 years for the Detroit Lions. Jared DeVries is a high school coach in Iowa – and returned to farming, too.
Another brother, Dusty, also played football for the Hawkeyes. Youngest brother Jay played at Wartburg College. Sister Jodi played volleyball at Northern Iowa.
“My siblings are all kind of wired the same way. Hard work, competitive, that’s something that on an everyday basis, shines through in my day to day,” DeVries said.
DeVries attended high school in the early 1990s. Aplington High won two Iowa state titles during DeVries’ sophomore and junior seasons, but enrollment at Aplington was so small, he was part of a consolidation for his senior year.
He graduated from the consolidated Aplington-Parkersburg High School in 1993 and led A-P deep into the Iowa playoffs before they were beaten by MFL MarMac High School, featuring future NBA player Raef LaFrentz.
DeVries was induced into the Iowa High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame in 2015 as a basketball player. But he was also a quarterback – the Des Moines Register reported in 2018 that DeVries talked his new football coach at A-P into converting from a run-based offense to a pass-based offense to take advantage of his quarterback skills – and played other sports, too.
Playing multiple sports in a small town cures boredom, but it still takes an impressive work ethic to excel at the level DeVries did.
“When you grow up in a small town, and if you’re in athletics, you’re playing every sport. So you go from football to basketball to baseball to track. That’s just what you do. If you didn’t, there’s not enough people to play. So that’s kind of your thing,” DeVries recalled.
This was the Darian DeVries that Greg McDermott got to know. Now Creighton’s head basketball coach, McDermott was just getting started on his coaching career as an assistant at North Dakota in the early 1990s when he recruited DeVries. Little did McDermott know he’d later have DeVries on his coaching staff with the Bluejays.
“He was hard-nosed and intense, just like he is as a coach. He has always had a great understanding of the game and was essentially a coach on the floor,” McDermott said in an email exchange with Hoosiers On SI.
McDermott didn’t get his guy that time. DeVries chose to play at Northern Iowa, about a half-hour away from the family farm.
DeVries played for one-time Ohio State coach Eldon Miller at UNI and was the Panthers’ point guard from 1994-98. UNI had not yet reached its status as an annual Missouri Valley Conference contender in the 1990s, but the Panthers did have their best-ever season in the MVC to that point with DeVries on the team when they went 11-7 in 1997.
DeVries’ ambitions at the time were to become an elementary teacher and high school basketball coach, but Miller was able to convince then-Creighton coach Dana Altman to take DeVries on as a graduate assistant in 1998.
That decision altered DeVries’ life path, one that eventually took him to Bloomington.
WHITELAND, Ind. (WISH) — “The Zone” featured highlights from eight high school boys basketball games from across central Indiana on Friday.
Watch highlights of Beech Grove at Whiteland above.
Final Score: Whiteland 89 Beech Grove 61
“The Zone” airs each Friday at 11:08 p.m. Click here to watch ‘The Zone’ for basketball highlights on February 27, 2026.
The Indiana Pacers are hoping to retain their 2026 first-round pick, which is protected 1-4 and 10-30. If the selection lands between 5 and 9, it conveys to the Los Angeles Clippers as part of the Ivica Zubac–Bennedict Mathurin trade.
At the top of the 2026 NBA Draft class, three names are consistently labeled as generational talents: AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer and Darryn Peterson.
Indiana would welcome any of the three. The bigger question is whether that feeling would be mutual.
On a recent episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, Simmons was joined by draft analysts Tate Frazier and J. Kyle Mann. During the discussion, Mann shared an interesting note about Peterson.
“I’ve gotten the impression from talking to people close to Darryn,” Mann said, “that Darryn is more likely to say, I’m interested in being the full on brain of this team. I don’t really want to play with another superstar, I want to be the center of the universe.”
J. Kyle Mann on The Bill Simmons Podcast
If that perception holds weight, it creates an intriguing dynamic.
The Pacers were one game away from an NBA championship last season and already feature two established stars in Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam. Indiana is not a franchise searching for a singular identity, it already has one.
To be clear, Mann’s comments reflect conversations and impressions, not a public statement from Peterson himself. Still, the fit is worth examining. Indiana’s backcourt rotation already includes Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith and T.J. McConnell. If Peterson were the pick, the Pacers would find ways to get him on the floor. He is that talented. But Indiana could not offer him an immediate “face of the franchise” role the way a Brooklyn, Sacramento or Washington might.
Mann also offered insight into how Dybantsa may view a situation like Indiana’s.
“AJ, people that know them both have told me that AJ is probably more likely to fit in with an Indiana,” Mann said. “Which is interesting because AJ likes to have the ball. Is he willing to be quick off of the ball with Haliburton? I just think that’s an interesting wrinkle in this.”
J. Kyle Mann on The Bill Simmons Podcast
The contrast is fascinating.
Hearing that Dybantsa would fit in more than Peterson is intriguing. Play style wise, I would lean more towards Peterson’s fitting how Indiana likes to play, especially with how Dybantsa has been utilized at BYU.
If we’re talking locker room fit, I think Dybantsa would embody what a Pacer is all about. Comes from a small market. Wants to win and doesn’t need the big city to do it in. He’s confident but won’t let his ego interfere with the success of the team. Just a levelheaded kid with a desire to be great, and would have one of the best playmaking point guards alongside him to help maximize his talent.
These two are the most polarizing and often mentioned names amongst NBA draft circles when looking at the top two in the class. If the comments made by Mann come to be true, the Pacers would be better off drafting the uber talented 6-9 forward, Dybantsa, than drafting a 6-6 elite shooting guard who would rather be “the guy” than a guy.
You can follow me on X @AlexGoldenNBA and listen to my daily podcast, Setting The Pace, wherever you get your podcasts.
HOBART, Ind. (WLS) — A wrong-way crash left one woman dead and two others seriously injured in Northwest Indiana earlier this week, police said.
The mother of the 20-year-old who was killed spoke exclusively with ABC7 Chicago as she is demanding justice.
ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watch
Just before 2 a.m. Saturday, the Hobart Fire Department responded to the horrific crash on Interstate 65 involving two vehicles, north of 61st Avenue near Merrillville, Indiana.
Rylee Hanson, 20, was killed in what investigators says was a head-on collision with a wrong-way vehicle in the northbound lanes.
“I had Rylee when I was 20 and she made me who I am,” mother Karen Hanson said. “She made me want to be a better person and she made me strive, to reach goals, so I could set examples for kids… She was half of my life. I don’t know how to be me without her.”
Her family says Rylee was a ray of light who graduated from Kankakee Valley High School in Demotte, Indiana where she earned her EMT certification from Ivy Tech Community College. She was headed to criminology studies at Indiana University.
Her parents are appalled nobody has been charged in the crash.
“We want to see change with how drinking is handled,” Karen Hanson said. “There’s gotta be a better way for how people drink or get served or more punishment for impaired drivers out on the road where they’re not getting so many chances.”
Troopers said they believed that the driver of the car going the wrong way was impaired at the time.
“We are going to make her as proud as she made us,” Karen Hanson said. “Because she did… there are no words to tell you about the pain. It is indescribable.”
The investigation is still ongoing. Anyone with footage of the crash, or of the vehicles prior to the crash, has been asked to contact Indiana State Police.
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