Darian DeVries clearly understands the importance of the Indiana-Purdue basketball rivalry.

He called it "one of the great rivalries in college basketball."

This season's meetings: Purdue at IU, Jan. 27; IU at Purdue, Feb. 20.

ROSEMONT, Ill. — Hard to imagine an IU basketball coach stepping into the Boilermaker-Hoosiers rivalry at a more disadvantageous time than Darien DeVries .

Purdue enters the season not only as the preseason Big Ten favorite for the third year in a row but the national championship betting favorite as well. Indiana , on its third coach in nine years with one NCAA tournament victory in that span, is predicted to finish somewhere in the middle of the conference .

In truly great rivalries, though, the history matters as much or more than the present. The

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