ROSEMONT, ILL – Another offseason. Another roster overhaul for second year Head Coach Darian DeVries.
Only Trent Sisley and Sam Alexis return from Indiana’s 2025 roster.
After building much of his first roster with transfers from outside the Power Four, he brought in six newcomers with Power Four experience already.
“This year, as you’re coming into it, like here’s our needs, here’s what we got to go try to target when the portal season begins,” DeVries said.
Starting From Scratch
As the NCAA Tournament was beginning, DeVries was starting from scratch.
Named Indiana’s 31st head coach just two days after Selection Sunday, DeVries took over a program on the outside looking in. He had a program to lead but no one to represent the cream-and-crimson.
The pieces began arriving in the following weeks. Conor Enright committed from DePaul, followed by DeVries’ son, Tucker, from West Virginia. Both had played for him at Drake, giving the new coach familiar faces to build around.
Much of the rest came from outside the Power Four. Lamar Wilkerson arrived from Sam Houston, Tayton Conerway from Troy, and Reed Bailey from Davidson.
Different programs. Different paths. The same next stop: the Big Ten.
Indiana finished 2025 at 18-14 overall and 9-11 in Big Ten play. That first season gave DeVries a full look at where his team stood and what he wanted to change.
“There were a lot of nights where if we didn’t have a guy or two making shots, it was really hard for us at times to score,” DeVries said at 2026 Big Ten Media Day. “And then without the depth and the rebounding, it just caught up to us during certain games.”
The roster would turn over again, but this time, attacked with a different approach.
A Different Kind of Reload
Six newcomers with Power Four experience join the Hoosiers’ squad for the 2026 season.
“For us, it was, hey, can we find as many guys that we can that have played at a Power Four level that have had production, so you’ve seen,” DeVries said.
Markus Burton, Aiden Sherrell, Samet Yigitoglu, and Jaedan Mustaf are among those additions. However, their previous stops were only part of the appeal. DeVries wanted size, more ways to score, and a bench he could turn to when shots weren’t falling.
Last season, a cold shooting night could leave Indiana searching for answers. DeVries said the Hoosiers relied heavily on threes, with few other places to turn when those attempts didn’t go down.
Now, he has options.
Burton can get into the paint and pull up from the elbow. Mustaf gives Indiana a physical driver who has practiced at every position outside of center. Inside, Yigitoglu provides a tall presence, while Sherrell gives DeVries size without sacrificing the spacing he wants.
"One night it could be one of seven guys to go get 20,” DeVries said.
That is exactly what DeVries wants in his second season at Indiana.
Last season, Wilkerson brought the spark time-and-time again. An example was the guard scoring a career-high 44 points and setting a program record with 10 3-pointers in a single game. He also led the team in scoring, averaging 20.9 points per game and shooting 37.8% from deep.
However when Wilkerson struggled, so did the Indiana offense.
An off night from one player no longer has to derail the entire offense. Now, DeVries believes he has enough depth to find another answer.“If a guy’s not on now, we have other guys that we can go to on the bench,” DeVries said.
More size. More scoring options. More players to choose from.
Establishing an Identity
The identity has been established since stepping foot on campus.
“Physical and tough,” DeVries said. “I mean, that’s what we have to be.”
That starts in practice, where Indiana’s added size is already making itself felt.
DeVries said there have been more collisions as the Hoosiers put a greater emphasis on attacking the glass after being out-rebounded offensively in 19 of their 32 games last season.
He wants those battles to turn into second and third chances offensively once the season begins.
Last year, Bailey was the tallest player on the roster at 6-foot-10. Now, three players are 6-foot-11 or taller.
Indiana recruited for that. Now it has to play that way.
“It’s our approach every day in practice,” DeVries said. “We want to be physical, tough, gritty, and to be good at the things that we prioritize.”
For Sisley and Alexis, the expectations stay the same. As the only two returners, they give the newcomers someone to learn from while adopting DeVries’ culture.
“You have to have a certain talent level, but it still comes back to the culture piece of it, and making sure that the locker room is always sound,” DeVries said. “That’s a huge priority for us.”
Sisley also had something a transfer-heavy roster can lack: an uninterrupted offseason in the program. DeVries said working with Indiana’s strength coach and nutritionist through the spring helped Sisley become more physical and confident heading into his sophomore year.
That is the kind of growth DeVries wants to keep in Bloomington.
“Now we want the transfer portal to be just something that we fill in, you know, maybe some needs,” DeVries said.
He targeted players with multiple years remaining while continuing to build through high school recruiting. 11 of the 17 players on Indiana’s roster this season have at least one year of eligibility left. Eventually, he wants those freshmen to become the veterans setting the example for the next class.
Keeping the foundation together is the long-term goal. The first test is seeing whether the added size and scoring options give Indiana the answers they lacked last season.
Indiana opens the 2026 season with an exhibition against Butler on Sunday Oct. 11 in Indianapolis.
