For Drew Adams, returning to Indiana is a 'dream come true,' but he and Darian DeVries are ready to win

As someone who grew up in Bloomington, played basketball at Bloomington High School South and got his first job in coaching under Tom Crean at Indiana, returning home was a “dream come true” for Drew Adams, as he’ll be an assistant under the new Indiana staff in year one of the Darian DeVries era.

In an appearance on the Players Perspective podcast, a show put on by Hoosiers Connect, the official NIL collective of Indiana University, Adams discussed just how much it means to him to return to Bloomington. Though it wasn’t just a homecoming—it was an opportunity to work and to return Indiana back to prominence under Coach DeVries.

“I mean to me, this is a dream job. Like, I’d rather be here than Duke, Kentucky anywhere. Like, I grew up going to a Assembly Hall and watching Bob Knight coach, and then Mike Davis, this is something to me, this is a dream come true,” Adams said, outlining how a return to Indiana was something he’s dreamt about, though when he arrived the staff had to hit the ground running.

Indiana had an entire roster to fill, as with a new staff coming in, every player on Mike Woodson’s 2024-25 team either expired their eligibility or decided to transfer (with the exception of Luke Goode and Anthony Leal‘s pending waivers). This presented a challenge, but Adams and DeVries had a specific mold that they wanted their players to fit.

“I guess the ability to be part of a team and to be selfless. I mean, there’s some phenomenal individuals out there that have never been able to win. So I guess I think winning’s an underrecruited thing,” Adams mentioned.

He doubled down on his opinion of recruiting winners.

“I think kids that have won their whole lives usually have a higher percentage of a chance to kind of figure it out and win at the next place. So I think being able to be part of a team, but also winning, like, I think that’s a trait that some people don’t always look for.”

For Adams and DeVries, winning is a mindset, so signing players in the portal who are wired that way was a must, and they put their money where their mouth is. They signed Tayton Conerway, a Sun Belt champion who was conference player of the year; Sam Alexis, 2025 national champion; and brought in Conor Enright and Tucker DeVries, two-time Missouri Valley Conference champions.

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Add on Jasai Miles and Josh Harris, the North Florida guys who beat not only Georgia Tech, but South Carolina during the 2024-25 season, and you’ve got several guys who know how to win games in tough situations.

It’s not just about the winning mindset, though, as Adams mentioned how he and DeVries looked for pieces they believe can fit together to become a cohesive unit.

“Like, you’re not trying to put a, you know, square peg into a circle. 
So we really got to evaluate the kids, the style of play, how they fit together, how they fit into his system, and, you know, I think we’ve got a good group that’ll play well together,” Adams said.

While Indiana put in a lot of effort into recruiting players to build its roster from scratch, this wouldn’t have been possible without the modern transfer portal, and Adams understands that, as he mentioned how the landscape of college athletics has changed tremendously.

“At Bradley University, my first year before the transfer portal and NIL we won five games at first. But we were the youngest team in the country, and we built that up into back-to-back NCAA tournament teams,” Adams said, recognizing that it took much longer to build a winning program back then.

I’m sure Bradley fans were pleased with the program turnaround in the end, but Adams said, “I don’t think Indiana fans want to wait until year three or four or five, whatever it is,” mentioning how DeVries and his staff are committed to building a winner in Year 1.

This is done not only by recruiting the right talent, but by understanding what basketball means to the state and the university, and there are few who understand it more than Adams. While he’ll be the only one from the state on staff, Adams made sure to let everyone know that the coaches around him still know what it means to be an Indiana basketball coach.

“Coach DeVries is a Midwest guy himself, from Iowa. He was at Creighton like 20 years or something. 
Like, he understands that, too. And I think, you know, Kenny Johnson’s worked here before. So I think we have a lot of guys that understand how important basketball is, not just not just the university, it’s the entire state, from high school, AAU, college, on up.”

SEE MORE: A look at how Darian DeVries’ Indiana coaching staff is shaping up

With the combination of understanding what Indiana basketball means, recruiting the right players and fitting them into DeVries’ system, Adams is confident that Indiana fans will have a team they’ll be excited to watch. He himself has been a fan of how DeVries operates in the past, as they both coached in the MVC years ago, while they faced each other last season when Adams was at Cincinnati and DeVries coached at WVU.

“I admire like how much he really makes sure the pieces fit together, that his type of kids on the floor in the style, but also that we’re going to have a good locker room and those kids fit the locker room too,” Adams said about DeVries.

With this new system, Adams looks to make his homecoming a successful one. While simply returning to Bloomington brings him so much joy, he and the staff are trying to have Hoosier Nation share that same feeling with their roster built from the ground up.

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