Hiring a general manager, whether that’s the position’s official title or not, is increasingly prevalent in college basketball. These roles aren’t all the same, there’s differing responsibilities from program to program, but most of said responsibilities are what usually falls on the professional sports staple with roster building, management, finances and the like.
But is it successful? Three (Duke, Michigan and Arizona) of the top five and six (adding in Illinois, UConn and Gonzaga) of the top ten teams in the most recent men’s AP top-25 poll have a general manager or similar role on staff. Those programs employ general managers with responsibilities ranging from analytics consultation to promotion and marketing.
Ryan Carr, who joined Indiana men’s basketball as “Executive Director of Basketball,” brings a wealth of NBA experience to a role that will “focus on roster building,” per an official release, while assisting with other areas of the program. He’ll report to head coach Darian DeVries.
If DeVries has any sort of weakness, it’s high-major coaching experience and building rosters to compete at this level. Luckily for Indiana, one of DeVries’ greatest strengths is recognizing said weaknesses and working to offset them with his staff. DeVries’ three top assistants, Rod Clark, Drew Adams and Kenny Johnson, bring a ton of recruiting experience and connections to the program. Now Carr brings management and scouting.
Indiana is surrounding DeVries with plenty of the necessary resources he needs t0 win at a high level. As running a college basketball program becomes increasingly complicated, these are the types of moves than can lessen a head coach’s burdens and help amplify their strengths. Time spent on scouting and mapping out future roster builds can instead be spent meeting donors, recruiting, testing new on-court strategies and more. Larger staffs sharing the load has proven successful for current top programs, so Indiana getting in on that is a great sign for the Hoosiers’ future.
With DeVries first roster’s flaws being exposed in Big Ten play given its lack of size, scoring threats outside of Lamar Wilkerson and depth, it’s fair to wonder what his second could look like given it too will require several additions through the transfer portal. Beyond that, what recruiting will look like through the high school and international talent pipelines.
Carr will have a say in all of that and more. Based on how the Pacers have performed in the last two decades, it’ll be a good one.