DeVries has history, blueprint in turning things around
West Virginia Athletic Director Wren Baker has placed an emphasis on building the basketball program as opposed to assembling an individual team.
“When you’re on board with a new coach it’s important they get the culture right, the staff right, the systems right and you have to have patience to allow them to grow into it,” Baker said.
But with Darian DeVries set to take over the Mountaineers basketball program, there is already a track record of success in these situations in his young head coaching career.
The former Drake head coach took over the Bulldogs program in March of 2018 and inherited a roster with only one returning starter and three contributors from the previous season. That is a tall task, but especially when you consider the Bulldogs hadn’t hit the 20-win mark in 10 seasons and hadn’t even finished above .500 in six years which sets the scene for a classic rebuild.
All DeVries did was win at least 20 games in each of the years he was at Drake and his 155 wins during that period is the best six-year stretch in the history of the school.
After leading his team to a regular season Missouri Valley Conference crown in his first year, DeVries guided the Bulldogs back to 20 wins in year two a feat that hadn’t been accomplished in back-to-back years since 1971 at the school.
And DeVries would sustain that success taking the Bulldogs to the NCAA Tournament in three of the past four years. In total, of the 11 total 20-win seasons in school history, DeVries is responsible for more than half. That comes with developing both schemes and a culture that can have success over time.
Now, DeVries will look to continue that success on a bigger stage with the West Virginia basketball program. The Mountaineers also will be looking for somebody to jump-start a turnaround after a disappointing 9-23 campaign during the 2023-24 campaign.
It remains to be seen how many holdovers will remain from the roster, but DeVries will be wearing a familiar hat when it comes to rebuilding a proud program. He’s quite literally been here before.
Equipped with an exciting four-out offensive style that finished No. 45 nationally in efficiency while averaging 80.5 points per game and a tough defense that has continued to improve despite those impressive numbers on the other end, the recipe is there for DeVries to hit the ground running.
The rise of the transfer portal also has provided earlier windows for success for coaches at new places and Baker even pointed to his former coach Grand McCasland when he was the Athletic Director at North Texas and the success he had in his first year after taking over the Texas Tech program.
“It is possible to be competitive and that certainly is the goal,” Baker said.
Now, some of this depends on how the roster is constructed moving forward as DeVries will inherit a roster that is certainly in flux with as many as nine returning players although only a handful of those played a significant role. But depending on how things unfold that number of potential returning players could be much lower as DeVries evaluates the program and players do the same with him.
On the plus side, there will be one massive building block as senior forward Tucker DeVries is expected to join his father in Morgantown for his final season. The 6-foot-7 guard-forward is a major addition considering he is coming off back-to-back Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year selections.
DeVries averaged 21.6 points, 6.7 rebounds and 3.6 assists for the Bulldogs this past season and 18.6 points, 5.7 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game the year prior. There aren’t many players out there that have back-to-back Player of the Year awards and were named the Freshman of the Year prior to that but DeVries checks those boxes and would be a major start to the roster recharge.
Now, obviously, the step up in competition to the Big 12 and squaring off against the level of players and coaches that DeVries will encounter on a nightly basis is a different animal. But the blueprint is there for West Virginia and their new head coach given what’s unfolded in the past.
It will be a process and one that could prove initially challenging but one that at least has a captain who has navigated similar waters in his past coaching stops.
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