West Virginia head men's basketball coach Darian DeVries participated in his first radio show as the Mountaineers' head coach.

The 2024-2025 season is a week away for DeVries and company and he talked about his team's mindset heading into next Monday, his thoughts on the Big 12, as well as how they competed in their most recent secret scrimmage.

The official start of the season is a week away for DeVries. DeVries said he's ready to get this thing started and has seen quite the improvement this summer.

"Our guys are ready. They’re ready to go play, they’re ready to be in front of the Mountaineer fans and be in the coliseum, as am I," DeVries said.

DeVries said he recently looked at the film from WVU's trip in the summer to Italy, and he's happy with how his team has progressed since then.

"It made me happy because it was, wow, we were really bad then. But we’ve gotten a lot better. The team has really committed to trying to get better every day, and that’s all you can ask as a coach… Like we told them after our last exhibition game on Saturday, they go in the win-loss column now," DeVries said.

Speaking of the exhibition, West Virginia played Wake Forest this past weekend, and DeVries kept it close to the vest about details but was happy with how it went.

"I liked how we competed. We certainly it took us a little bit to get going, but this was the first game we saw the type of bodies we’re going to see every night, and I wanted to know how we were going to respond… after about five minutes or so, I thought the rest of the game. They really played at a level I thought we had to play at to be successful," DeVries said.

In addition, DeVries said it did make him smile about how they played. He said it was not the best shooting night, but he thought it was an excellent experience for his team.

"We didn’t have a great shooting night, and we were still able to make me smile," DeVries said.

This will be DeVries' first season in the Big 12, and he is aware of the step up in competition from the Missouri Valley Conference.

DeVries said it was a process this summer of scouting the teams in the league, but he feels they are in a good spot.

"What we did, I assigned every assistant 2-3 different teams over the course of the summer, and by the time we got to later July, we basically took scouting reports from every team in the league… until you start playing games, you’ll make those adjustments then. I feel like we’ve got a real good idea," DeVries said.

DeVries said he expects the league to be physical and wants the game officiated accordingly.

"I would like that a lot. As long as we’re the more physical team, I’d like that," DeVries said of referees allowing more physical play on defense. "That’s the way I anticipate the game being called because it’s the way it’s been called in the league before."

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