Darian DeVries understood there would be some adjustments.
That comes with the territory when you inherit essentially an entirely new basketball team as he did when he took over the West Virginia basketball program.
There’s a period where everybody involved from the coaches to the players are simply just trying to figure each other out on and off the floor.
As coaches, the responsibility is to figure out each player’s strength and try to put them in the best position to succeed while the players have to discover what the coaches want out of them.
It takes both time and effort.
“I felt like over the past six or seven weeks we’ve made strides. The biggest thing is that you got to learn as a group how to win and that’s the part that takes the longest time,” DeVries said.
West Virginia also fortunately has the added bonus of the Italy trip to help cultivate some of that even further and will be able to spend more time together both on and off the court.
One of the biggest things that DeVries wants out of his basketball team is for them to create their identity. It sounds simply enough, but what does this team want to consistently be and what exactly does that look like on a day-to-day basis?
At times that simply boils down to what do you watch on film and practice every day. It has to be reinforced on a daily basis and should be obvious to anybody watching the team practice.
“They should be able to leave and know what our identity is and if they can’t we’re not there yet,” DeVries said. “We’re still working on that.”
The head coach wants his team to play with both energy and enthusiasm while being connected on both ends of the floor. But it’s a difficult balance to play free and fast when you need to process what you’re being asked to do in a new system with new plays and terminology.
“What separates you from what everybody else is doing? Everybody is giving effort, but how can you give just a little bit more than everybody else?” DeVries said.
West Virginia is currently lacking size, but the focus is developing ways to offset it. That means being a physical basketball team and doing the things that will keep them in games such as rebounding the basketball and guarding the ball.
“There aren’t any shortcuts to it,” DeVries said.
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