Indiana basketball proved a valuable trait to its coach that will pay off down the line
INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana emerged from the Gainbridge Fieldhouse tunnel Monday night to a surprisingly sparse crowd, a reminder of the power of momentum and dynamic pricing. If the organizers of this game, an early season nonconference test for both IU and Syracuse , might have reason to rethink their ask for tickets, given an announced attendance of 5,047 fans, then Darian DeVries certainly got a reminder that his base still needs some convincing as well. There have been too many false November dawns around here in the last decade. The mostly Indiana-partisan crowd that did turn out was treated to a basketball game that was, if not always clean, then certainly competitive. A first-year coach with a young roster on one sideline battled for 40 minutes with a second-year coach and an almost completely remade one on the other. This was bound to be imperfect basketball, but it was rarely boring basketball. And at its end, when the final horn sounded and the scoreboard read “Indiana 83, Syracuse 80,” DeVries walked off the fieldhouse floor once again aware of the task ahead of him defensively. Crucially, he also walked away with a firmer sense of what that team will do
