You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Castle and Clavio joining you once again. It is Monday, March 31st. March is probably over by the time most of you are seeing or listening to this, which is a shame. One of the best months of the year, especially if you love basketball. But plenty to talk about on the basketball front with IU in particular. And we are pleased to have a new
guest to the podcast. But if you're around the IU media space, not a new name to you. Tom Ackerman, the sports director at Camo X in Saint Louis. IU alum. IU Sports Media alum and a guy that I talk with about IU basketball in particular on a pretty regular basis here on the show. Tom, welcome for the first time to Crimson Cast. Great to have you on. Caitlin, it is great to be with you. It's great to be on Crimson Cast.
It's great to talk IU sports. And yeah, I am a long time consumer of this podcast so it is nice to be part of it. How are you? How often in this business do we get to do the long time listener, first time caller? Absolutely right. Long time listener, first time caller. You know, it's funny. Recently I was watching the Ohio State game, the one with the last home game. And when Trey hit the three, I pumped my jumped off the couch and pumped my fist.
And my wife said, boy, you are just obsessed with this team, aren't you? And I said, let me tell you something, I'm like, this team is all I got. Because when you think about it, I'm actually connected as a business partner with the teams that I work with here and say Louis, I love them. I mean, I grew up a Saint Louis
fan. And yes, I am connected to Indiana University and some business dealings, let's say as a Advisory Board member of the media school with the with the original Dean, Jim Shanahan, and you know, other other workings with you and others. But you know that truly this team right here is a passion of mine and it's so much fun to be asked to talk a little bit more about it because, you know, I do get into work mode too and I start to study this team as if
I'm on the beat. So it's a. It's a lot of fun to get into it all. That's great. And I mean, it's, it's one of those things where I don't think people outside the media business really realize the distance you have to keep professionally between the teams that you're covering versus what you would have as a fan. And it is, it is great. And I know just from talking to you how passionate you've been for so long about IU basketball in particular.
So it's great to be able to talk with you about it. First, before we get started, just quick reminder, folks were brought to you by Home Field Apparel, your place to go for the finest in college fashions, the softest fabrics, the coolest designs. Use the code HOME 23 and get 15% off your first order from Home Field. And they continue to roll out awesome March Madness related
items. They'll have a a bunch of new products coming out here in April that you'll want to keep an eye on and always some new innovative things from home field that are exciting to check out. So go to their website, homefieldapparel.com. Check them out on social media as well. So Tom, before we get started, why don't we go through your history with IU? You know, you were a student here. You we overlapped by I think a single year, although we didn't know each other in that
intermediate period. But we had kind of similar starts in terms of how we got going with IU, what brought us to Bloomington in the 1st place to talk a little bit about your connection with IU and where that all began. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm a kid from St. Louis, MO. You know, I've, I've been a Saint Louis kid my whole life and I've lived here my whole life except for the four years I spent in Bloomington from 93 to 97.
I graduated from high school in 93, started in Bloomington the fall of 93, graduated in 97. Very proud of that run there. And I'm, I'm as as passionate about IU and it's connected to it now as I was then. And it really started. The interesting thing was my line is that I got recruited by Bob Knight and it's actually a true story.
So when I was in high school, I was 16 years old, my dad and I were in Colorado at a celebrity golf tournament following our friend Larry Ziegler, who played on the PGA Tour. And he was playing in a pro am, the Gerald Ford Invitational. And the former president had his own tournament in Vail. And Bob Knight was playing with Larry and Larry said, you know, come down and see us, we'd love to say hi.
So we went down to the practice screen, we're on the other side of the ropes, and I got to meet Bob Knight for the first time as a 16 year old kid. Well, 5 minutes later they asked me to go caddy for him. I didn't know that was going to happen. I was a caddy in Saint Louis, so I knew what I was doing. So I, I did, I went over, I went underneath the rope and I ended up catting for Coach Knight in
this tournament. And Long story short, you know, he took a liking to me and actually was interested in where I was looking at college pushed Indiana asked if I would like to come visit. And I found out later upon that meeting that he he showed some interest in me and was encouraging me to try to be a manager, at least try out to be a manager. And, you know, as it turned out, this was my passion. I wanted to be a broadcaster.
I want to be on this side. But it was that first meeting that I had with Buzz Kirpius that I fell in love with Indiana University. I wanted to be in. She sold me, Coach Knight sold me. I I fell in love with the school, got into the school, accepted and I never looked back. And, and, you know, it's a, it's a very special place in my heart. My dad passed away suddenly of a heart attack right after my high school graduation. So Indiana is where I healed. Indiana is where I became a man.
Indiana's where I carried on my passion of sports and basketball and broadcasting and, you know, made incredible friends that we are still very close to this day. That is, that is my tie with IU. It goes well beyond sports, which obviously a big part of my life. Yeah, that's, that's a tremendous story and and one I'd heard before, but I wanted the the people to hear that obviously. So you, you go to IU and you kind of did what I did when when I was here the four years
following that. You're working at WIUS at the time, which, which was it was a Spartan arrangement, to say the least. You know, a small house on campus. It was very much kind of run by the folks that lived in Collins Living Learning Center, which wasn't the most sports friendly, but there were a lot of opportunities to call games. And you have that experience. You move back to Saint Louis after that.
And then what? What happened in that intermediate period between the end of the 90s and now? Yeah, it was. And what a time, I mean, what a time to be able to graduate from Indiana, to have that experience, like you said, calling games, doing basketball and football and baseball for the student radio station.
And you know how it is. I mean, you as your students do now, you know a lot of is it on your shoulders, producing it, being there on time, preparing, all of those things I learned at Indiana and I came back to Saint Louis that summer and I applied for a job at my dream station and I went for it at KMOXI had heard of an opening for a board operator slash producer and it didn't make a lot of money. It was a $7.00 an hour job, but you know, my dream was to work in my hometown and this was an
inn. I got the interview at least to to that stage and I told them that my goal in my career is to be a nationally known sports broadcaster. But I wanted to, you know, earn that through many years of work, and I wanted to put in that time here at KMOX. And I think my advantage was that I was a passionate listener of the station. And I knew everything about their lineup. I knew about their personalities, and I had some ideas.
And, you know, I got paid very little to do a lot of stuff, get coffee, drive the van, you know, make a phone call, book a guest. But it wasn't very long. You know, days into the job that I was working alongside Jack Buck, my idol, and you know, all the other great people that work at Camo X and have worked at Camo X. And I learned from the best of the best. I learned how to carry myself professionally. I learned how to interact with
fans. I learned how to to talk about a brand like the Cardinals. And also I was thrown right into the fire. I mean, they didn't waste time. They put me right in there. I was covering the big names and, you know, I sort of learned on the job on the fly and I wouldn't ask for anything more. You know, that the chaos of, of covering big league sports like I like I was able to do. And I'll tell you, covering Coach Knight in Indiana prepared
me for that. I mean, I was no stranger to big press conferences, big personalities, big national media coming to town. That didn't bother me at all. And it also helped that Tony Darussa and Bob Knight were great friends. We found out that I was a Bob Knight guy. My relationship with him was pretty secure and very, very fortunate to be able to to learn from somebody like that about the game of baseball.
So there's it was a it was a very, very special time of my life that that doesn't seem like that long ago, right, right. Obviously. But it's been, you know, over half my life, well over half my life. I've been at KMOX here in St. Louis, that's awesome. Now one of the things that you do, you know, and it's, it's even outside of what you do at KMOX is you've done a lot of
broadcasting. Of course, Saint Louis, home of many things sports related, but one of them is Arch Madness, the Missouri Valley Conference tournament. You're right kind of in the middle there the conference and you know, as soon as we heard the announcement that Darren Devries, who coached the Drake, which is a long time Missouri Valley member, I was going to be the next head coach to IUI.
Was like, I wonder what Tom thinks about this, given that you've covered that conference closely covered coach Devries while he was there. So maybe let's let's move to that like your your impressions of Darren Devries as a head coach and and a long time Valley coach, because he was obviously an assistant at Creighton before that. And what stuck out, I guess, from the six years that he was heading the bench in Des Moines? Yeah, absolutely.
You know, my profession has taken me to a lot of places. But in basketball, I've been very fortunate to be around a lot of coaches, you know, whether it was, you know, doing radio at the University of Missouri or now doing TV for Saint Louis University and being around Josh Shirts, all the Big 12 SEC, you know, some Big 10 thrown in there, as well as, you know, national assignments and the Missouri Valley Conference, though, you know, doing TV for them since, gosh, 2003.
To think of the names that have come through there, the coaches that have come through there, you know, you can just put them out there. Some of the best that I've ever seen. Matt Painter, you know, it comes to mind as somebody that jumped out that it wasn't going to be around the Valley for very long. These are some of the most focused, hard nosed, tough coaches, humble in a lot of ways, and all of that embodies Darren Devries.
Darren Devries is a competitor. He struck me right away as an assistant under Greg McDermott at Creighton in the way that they recruited to their system and the way that they coached. He was highly regarded as a player. Darren was in his time in Cedar Falls in Northern Iowa and you know, he was the valley through and through and he took over his Drake coach. You could see that the team had his personality, Tough, hard nosed, humble, and they'd never,
ever gave an inch. And I was very impressed with how they were unselfish and played together as a group, you know, very competitive. And it struck me pretty quickly the Darren De Vries was not going to be around the Valley very long either. As it turned out, he got the job of West Virginia. And I'm convinced that if West Virginia stays healthy, they're in the tournament this year. They weren't able to do that, but they did have some great wins along the way. So proven correct there.
And then finally, when I got wind that Indiana was talking to him and when it became reality that he was the coach at IUI, felt very satisfied. And you know, as an IU fan, we don't always have that feeling. I mean, we've been trying to replace Bob Knight for decades now, and this is coach number six in that attempt. Depends on who you count and who you don't. Yes, right. Yeah, you could. You could probably add one more
in there. Well, it's been, it's been a, it's been a, a, a very, very tough ride. And here we go. You know, and, and I feel very confident in saying this that I think Indiana fans are really going to relate to and appreciate the type of basketball that Darren Devries puts forward.
That is my first impression. Describe what you anticipate he he's going to put forward and and how like, what is it about his style of play both offensively and defensively that you think is going to appeal to IU fans? Well, I think that offensively he is going to try to catch you napping defensively, so as soon as they make a steal in transition, they're going to come get you in the 1st 10
seconds. Now, that's really always been his his philosophy, Creighton under McDermott and that's what they do. And then offensively, they get you in the half court. They're going to work you. They're going to hit the boards hard. They're always seem to have he always had a very experienced, heady, smart point guard and preferably 2. You know, I think about the Drake teams of the past, you know, there was never one person necessarily to lean on except
when he had Tucker plan. You know, Tucker as a two time Valley player of the year was an obvious choice. But if Tucker for some reason his shots weren't falling, other people would pick up the slack. But they didn't make things easy on you. And in the half court, they would absolutely find ways to get a high percentage basket. And if it wasn't there, they had the shooters to burn you on the outside. And then finally, there was one thing you could count on is that Drake was going to defend.
There were there were no nights off. Drake has always been at West Virginia, you know, I mean that look, it's sincere Harris. There is no no surprise at all that he was an all Big 12 defensive player as a sophomore. I mean, he identified what he wanted. He implements those players and puts them in the best position to win. That's what I expect to see out
of this team. You know, the, and I'll share a quick story about his mentality and, and, and the I think that's a big part of a basketball team is how does a team respond when things don't go well? And I mentioned the injuries, but all you need to know about, if you look at the West Virginia scores from last year, what's the one that jumps out at you? Probably the win at Allen Fieldhouse.
There's a story behind that win. So they go to Kansas and they have flight problems to the point where I believe it was a flat tire on the plane. So they can't get into Kansas. They finally get in at about 3:00 in the morning for a 1:00 tip. They get to the hotel, electricity, power goes out in the hotel. So this is middle of the night. Now we're in the morning. We got a 1:00 tip of West Virginia at Kansas. Kansas, they don't lose their conference opener.
Hadn't lost their conference opener since 1993. W Virginia never wanted Allen. Tucker's hurt. Their big man Hansberry is in a boot. I mean, it's like every excuse they could possibly have to get their rear ends kicked in and what do they do? Typical Daren Devries, they come out of the gate, they go up 10 and they hold off Kansas and win at Allen Fieldhouse. And it was kind of the start of exposing K UA little bit, but it was a tremendous win for West Virginia.
And that told me a lot about what kind of a mentality his teams will have. Didn't surprise me. I saw it at Drake, but that he was able to take that in a short amount of time. Mind you, a group that had won what, 9 games the year before and had them playing his way that quickly, that got my attention as well. Well, and you can even connect that back to Drake.
I mean, you're familiar with this, given your long history with the Missouri Valley, that that is not a prime coaching spot historically in the Missouri Valley. I mean, they had the one great year with Keno Davis that kind of came out of the blue in what, 2008, I think it was, or 2007 and then a whole lot of not great.
I mean, when you think of the Missouri Valley, you think about Creighton or Wichita State or or Missouri State, the how impressive was it for him to average essentially like over 22 victories a year at Drake of all schools within that conference? Yeah, And you know, I think again about point guard and as much attention as Tucker de Vries received, Roman Penn was a great player for that Drake team.
And it was like, you could always count on Drake to do certain things well, manage the game well, not make too many mistakes. And you just expected them to be good. And he created that identity. He got them back on track. And now Ben Mccollum's a heck of a coach. And he took it to another level. And I think it's the perfect fit at Iowa and ends up winning, you know, 31 games for a reason. That machine was rolling also. And Drake's expectations were high.
And Ben was able to to get it to that level even after Darren left, which is very impressive also. But yeah, there's even some buzz now. I heard the other day, you know, out to dinner with some Valley people who are like, at what point does does Drake move up to another conference? I'm like, wait a minute. Drake was just just, you know, six or seven years ago was sort of back in the middle of the road.
But here they are as a premier team in the Missouri Valley Conference. It's, you know, Des Moines, IA, as you mentioned, you know, it's not the most desirable place for people to go, but they have a great school. They play in the NAP Center, which is a cool little arena. They have, you know, some good resources up there. Very highly regarded academic institution. And Drake University is a basketball destination. And Darren Devries got them back moving again.
I know having worked in Iowa in radio and having had the Des Moines schools in the same conference as the school that I broadcasted for, it was a it was a not tidy 90 minutes each direction to get up to those games. And I was always struck by, you know, Northern Iowa in the Missouri Valley has always been a player and and they were they've been a part of a lot of NCAA upsets and like there's no reason why it can't work at Drake, but they need the right
people to get things moving. And clearly with debris and now with McCollum, they've been able to do that. It does kind of bring it, you know, bring the circle back to IU. And I'm curious to get your take on this. You see a ton of basketball. You've called a ton of basketball.
You've obviously. Had this affinity for IU and you covered it at a time when it was not at its apex, certainly, but there was a much different atmosphere, a much more celebrated atmosphere around IU basketball in the mid 90s because you're still basking in the afterglow of having won three national titles in the previous 20 years. What do you see as the main changes that have to happen with IU basketball to get it back to the level that it professes that it wants to be at? Yeah.
I mean, I think 1 is you have to have an identity as a program so that players will be attracted to it. And I know that Indiana has an IL money. We know that they they're up there in, in terms of resources and they're going to be able to get certain players, but you have to be able to attract players in Indiana. We've said this kind of, you know, over and over again, high school kids don't know Indiana. Like we know it. You know, they don't know about the history.
They don't know about Bob Knight. You know, they're told it, but they didn't feel it that this is, you know, those years are long gone. So you have to create something that is attractive to the basketball player to come to Indiana, whether that is of course NIL funds, we all know that's part of it and the coaching staff is part of it. But somewhere where it's fun for them to play. And I think that Darren Devries is an offensive coach. I mean, I really do.
I I think that he's going to create something that is going to be attractive to players to want to play in. And, and that's really important. I think that the other thing you need to do as Indiana University is have consistency in your program as well. And I think that they have attempted that in the past when they're going to really give Darren De Vries that opportunity to have his system in place and try to carry players over from
year to year. It's hard to just shuffle the deck every year and that's easier said than done, but that you have to be able to retain and continue on some sort of group so that you can carry those forward each year. You it's hard to just change over every year with with a different group. So I do think they need that as well. Indiana is a a school that is complicated because it has such a demanding fan base, but I think you want to feed into that.
You want to find somebody and they've done that. Now. A young coach who's hungry and he is young. I mean, he is our age. He's what, 49? So, you know, he's got, he's got a lot of things to prove and, and a lot of, I think relatable Midwest sort of values with the crowd there. He, he's, you know, from Applington, Iowa, He's, you know, got that blue collar upbringing. His dad was, you know, in the farming and his mom's still a hairdresser. And then, you know, his, his
family all played sports. And, you know, I, I just think that you have to be able to connect with that audience. So I think what I'm saying is I do think it's important that the coach, the figurehead has some ability to connect with the fanbase. I think it's important, you know, Archie Miller, I, I, I would not deny his basketball knowledge, but I think as time went on, I felt like there was not that comfort level in going all in the fishbowl.
I think that Mike Woodson was prepared to go in on the fishbowl and I think that over time that one got to be too much as well. It's it's not a lot of fun sometimes. So you know, it it just is going to have to be the connection, the embracing that craziness. I think Tom Crean had it for a little while. I really do. He embraced it and actually felt
very comfortable in the mud. But over time, I think it just, you know, it ran its course and perhaps everybody got a bit worn out, including Tom and A and a change was necessary. And now I think, you know, it'll be very interesting to see how this staying power of Darren Devries evolves over time. But I think that they do have the right person. I feel that right now. I agree with all of that. I mean, I think IU fans are often misunderstood with this.
And look, obviously the reaction to losses has been bad, but I think a lot of it has been, there's been a perceived lack of effort at times of the coaches over the course of the last decade really to kind of meet the fans halfway on these things. And the fact that Darren Devries, it is all over social media over the weekend that he has gone up to the 3A and 4A high school basketball championships in Indianapolis, I mean, that really resonated
amongst a lot of folks. It's like, hey, someone's putting an effort in here at the beginning of things and I. Yeah, you got to exactly. Like that Help. Yeah, you got to be able to go to the banquet in wherever town and if someone says was that Jeffersonville, Fisher's Game, not unbelievable. And and Darren can say, yeah, man, I was there. I mean, that was crazy. And be able to break it down and have that conversation with somebody. I mean, that is it's extremely
important. And I'm not just talking about the big money people. I'm talking about people who support the program, who are going to hand it down generation after generation who are going to buy the tickets. We're going to talk your program up. You never know where that conversation will go to another high school coach or high school player or, you know, gets out into the the public, you know, and and and continues to create a positive vibe about the Indiana experience.
It is an experience unto its own. We know that. I mean, there's, there's very few fan bases like ours, but that's OK. I mean, we, we just kind of, we kind of accept that as, as the, the passion and the magic of Indiana basketball. And, and sometimes I agree with you. I think a perception of it can be that it's too intense.
I think that if you, if you're coaching Indiana basketball, you want that, you know, you want that craziness because you think about what will it be like if, if I do get it done? I mean it there. There is no better place to be in college basketball than if you're the one who takes Indiana to the promised land. As I, you know, I always heard people talking about IU basketball as if it was like, like we were impervious to, to falling off of a Cliff.
From a success perspective. This was 25 years ago. I remember there was one gentleman in particular on the message boards who would constantly say there's nothing different in the water in Bloomington. But that runs both ways. There's nothing that preserves high level success, but there's nothing that prevents it either.
It's really just about having the best combination of the right people, doing the right type of work, the hard work that's needed to get you to that level and sustain it. And I think we've seen that in a bunch of basketball programs across the country. It's not just something that's unique to Indiana. No, and I try to explain it to people that and this isn't unique to Indiana either, but it is true that who was I talking to the other day?
Oh, it was like a Murray State fan was in town for the For Arch madness. And he said, you know, I was walking down Market Street and someone recognized my jacket and said, hey, Murray State Racers, you know, And I said, that's awesome. And I said, if you were playing in Bloomington, they'd stop you and probably break your line up down for you and tell you what they think you should be doing. Indiana fans are basketball fans, period.
I mean, they basketball first, Indiana basketball second, basketball's first. They want to make sure that you're playing the game the right way and they will call you on it. And that's what I love about the fan base the most is you feel it inside the building. And again, there are other schools that are like that, that have that sort of lineage in history, but you feel it inside the building. The passion, the understanding
of the game. And if you don't like coaching in front of 17,000 coaches, well, Indiana's not for you. Well, Tom, I, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us on the show. It's a lot of fun and appreciate your perspective on things and I know we'll see you back in Bloomington for games this upcoming year and certainly just appreciate your insights in general on all this.
Well, it's my pleasure and I know that, you know, as we speak right now, there's some players taking a look around campus and eventually that class will be filled and maybe we can talk about a few other people that join this team. But yeah, it it should be a lot of fun to watch this develop. I'm really looking forward to it and always great to talk to you. Likewise, Tom Ackerman joining us, horse rider, KMOX and long time IU fan and alum. We appreciate him joining us on
the show. Thanks to all you folks for listening as well. We'll be back with more podcasts throughout the course of the week. I'm Galen Clavio, stay never daunted, bring back to Bison. We'll catch you folks on the flip side song, everybody.