Like Everyone Else, Indiana Coach Darian DeVries Waits For Decisions On Luke Goode, Anthony Leal

STARLIGHT, Ind. – There were many things Indiana men’s basketball fans wanted to hear from Indiana men’s basketball coach Darian DeVries on Wednesday night during the Hoosiers Connect fundraiser at Huber’s Winery, Orchard and Vineyard.

However, near the top of that list would have been clarity on whether Luke Goode and Anthony Leal might be able to play for the Hoosiers in the 2025-26 season. Or at a minimum, whether DeVries had any idea of when a decision might be made.

Unfortunately for those fans, those players and DeVries himself, he had no guidance to give on whether the two veteran guards might be back with Indiana for another season.

The NCAA determines the timeline on whether to approve eligibility waivers. With many student-athletes testing the beleaguered sanctioning body – which has taken a beating in the courts in some eligibility denials – to get another year of eligibility, there’s an anticipated backlog that is inconvenient for those who wait for a decision.

“Their waivers are still in process. My understanding is there's been, as you probably all know, that a ton of waivers have been filed, so I think there's a little bit of a backup there. So from a timing standpoint, we don't really have a lot of clarity on when those decisions will be made. Sooner the better…that's really out of our control,” DeVries said.

DeVries is clearly holding roster spots for both players. Indiana currently has 11 players committed. If the House settlement passes, the roster limit is supposed to be 15 players, but DeVries only intends to have 13 players – which was the scholarship limit under rules still in place.

“Yeah, we still have a couple open spots, so we're still actively recruiting to see if there's something that fits and makes sense, and we can kind of go a lot of different directions with that, you know, as the roster stands today, and we still have those two extra spots. So we'll see what that plays out like,” DeVries said.

The waivers filed by both Goode and Leal would have been non-starters until court decisions on eligibility against the NCAA created what is perceived as a more waiver-friendly environment.

Both players are basing their waiver claims on injuries that occurred two seasons ago. In Goode’s case, it was at a different school. His injury season was when Goode played at Illinois.

Goode played 10 games for the Fighting Illini during the 2022-23 season. He broke his foot in the preseason and returned to action in February 2023. Goode would be under the traditional one-third standard in terms of games played to qualify for a waiver. However, typically those waivers were filed in the season immediately after the injury occurred, so Goode’s claim is something the NCAA does not have much history with.

The dynamic is also true for Leal – and his situation also concerns the 2022-23 season. Leal got hurt in a game against Miami of Ohio in November 2022. He missed a month of action.

However, Leal returned to play some games during the season after his injury. He played 11 games, but it will be up to the NCAA how many games were missed due to injury or coach’s decision, which would not typically make a player eligible for a waiver.

DeVries is just waiting for a decision like everyone else.

“That's why we've kind of held back a couple scholarships here of trying to see where this process plays out for them and then make decisions based off that. And like I said, hopefully we'll have a better idea on the timing of that stuff, sooner than later, to see where that all falls,” DeVries said.

If Goode and Leal don’t have their waivers approved, DeVries will carry on with the roster-building philosophy he used in the transfer portal for the Hoosiers. That’s the same philosophy that brought him success at Drake and West Virginia.

“I think the biggest challenge is we want to make sure that everybody we're bringing in is what we want, not only for this year, for long term, in terms of establishing who we want to be, what we want that to look like, making sure they can complement each other on the floor, off the floor,” DeVries said.

“(Indiana will) not take any shortcuts to make sure that we're doing this right from day one. And if it takes a little longer, then it takes a little longer, but we tried to do it as quickly as we could, but also being very smart and calculated about it,” he concluded.