WVSports.com continues with our popular feature: The 3-2-1. We'll break down three things we learned that week, two questions we have and give one prediction.

Here is the next installment of the 3-2-1 looking at the West Virginia football program, the latest on basketball, and what’s happening in recruiting.

3 things I learned:

1–Hoops practice beginning. West Virginia has started practicing for the 2024-25 basketball season and head coach Darian DeVries provided an update on how that process is unfolding along with where his team is currently at.

DeVries believes that his team, which features 12 new scholarship players, has made significant strides in key areas since the month of June. That includes the offensive concepts, ball movement, and establishing an identity while also learning the concepts on the defensive side of the ball along with the positioning.

The trip to Italy was good not only because West Virginia did what they needed to on the basketball court, but learned about one another more as a team during those ten days as they spent all of that time together away from the floor.

DeVries understands the league that he is going to be competing in this season in the Big 12, but the focus is for now on improving with the goal of trying each game on the schedule. There's a lot of work to do before West Virginia can get to that point, but that's what the preseason practices are designed to accomplish. The head coach said that he would focus on 90-minute, high-intensity practices in order to simulate game situations and the most encouraging thing he has seen to date is the approach to improvement that everybody on the roster has shown even as roles are starting to establish themselves.

There won't be any quick decisions on where guys fit into the rotation early though as DeVries wants to avoid complacency early on and is looking for a high level of competition across the board with the roster. He also pointed out that he has purposefully tried to make difficult calls as the official in practice in order to make things tougher on his team to see how they respond to adversity.

Each player has now been medically cleared, and while guard Joseph Yesufu is still working his way back, the Mountaineers want to start the year with a bigger rotation while eventually narrowing that down to eight or nine players as the season proceeds. Now, that doesn't mean that others won't be required to be ready just in case and that's the balancing act that the coaching staff will need to accomplish.