West Virginia is set to participate in the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas and it’s something that head coach Darian DeVries believes will be an extremely valuable experience for his team.
The Mountaineers will open against Gonzaga and then depending on the result will play either Indiana or Louisville.
The final game of the multi-team event, MTE for short, will come against one of Arizona, Oklahoma, Providence or Davidson depending on the results of the games in that portion of the bracket.
“I love the MTEs. I think they’re, again, great opportunities for everybody to put yourself, in this particular case, in a tournament setting. So you can see how they kind of respond,” DeVries said. “You’ve got to play three games in three days, very similar to post-conference tournaments.”
The multi-team event is going to effectively give the Mountaineers a preview of what they could see in March for the Big 12 Tournament and also prepare them to hit areas such as recovery and getting ready for the next game.
"So you get a little feel for that tournament type environment, that tournament feel of seeing how guys respond after a night. They’re guaranteed these three games but we’re going to have a real good idea of maybe we need to sub a little bit more or whatever it might be a get a little feedback from this tournament," DeVries said.
It also gets teams ready for what they could see down the line as you must prepare for a multitude of different playing styles especially in a league as challenging as the Big 12.
“You’re going to see three different teams, most likely. From a learning opportunity, you’re going to see teams that really post it. You’re going to see teams that maybe play great in transition,” he said. “You’re going to see some zone defense. So it’s going to really challenge your team.”
This is a good jumpstart to round out the non-conference schedule because it will give West Virginia an opportunity to see as many different styles as possible. Especially when you factor in how talented the teams that are competing in this event are overall.
That will provide West Virginia plenty of time to learn about themselves on top of their opponents.
“You've seen a little bit of everything. You've been able to learn from where your deficiencies are. You've also been able to learn, hey, this is what we're kind of good at, and try to make those adjustments. So I love the MTE tournaments. I think they're great challenges, great opportunities for teams to learn a lot about themselves,” DeVries said.
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