West Virginia head coach Darian DeVries held his weekly coaches show on Monday, where he talked about his team's win over Georgetown, recent improvement, and how they handle on-court adjustments.
Georgetown Win
West Virginia beat Georgetown 73-60 on Friday night. The Mountaineers trailed by two at halftime, but a 16-0 run helped propel them to a victory.
"We weren’t very good. We had a tough first half. We just seemed a half-step slow. We weren’t quite as sharp as we had been playing. To our guys' credit though, they were able to go into halftime, regroup, reset… I thought the guys did a great job of responding in the second half," DeVries said.
DeVries was also very animated throughout the game, especially in the second half. He credited the crowd for being able to help them on defense as well as confuse Georgetown in what was their first true road game.
"I thought they had a hard time communicating where they couldn’t get into their sets in the second half… I thought it affected both teams, for us in a positive way," DeVries said.
West Virginia ended the game shooting 45.6 percent from the field while they also were able to go 6-for-15 from beyond the arc in the second half.
Personal Improvement
DeVries pointed out two guys who have improved as of late, citing Javon Small and Toby Okani specifically. Small dropped 26 points in the win over Georgetown on Friday, while Okani has scored at least 10 points in each of his last four games.
"Wasn’t really focused on his points, it was how can you help us win. On some nights, I think he’s going to be a 7-8 assist guy, and on other nights, he’s going to be a 25-plus points guy," DeVries said of Small.
DeVries also pointed out how both Small as well as Tucker DeVries have taken a step forward since WVU was drubbed by Pitt early in the season.
"We challenged both him and Tucker that they need to be more aggressive, more assertive, more involved in the offense… Javon, I thought since that game has done a really good job of being more aggressive, making people stop him, and when they do, now we’ve got opportunities for everybody else," DeVries said.
As far as Okani goes, DeVries said he's playing the best basketball he's played all season. Okani scored his 1,000th point this past weekend, but it's more about his scoring, which is helping the Mountaineers on offense.
"What he’s doing a really good job of that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet is screening and cutting… he’s playing his role almost to perfection right now," DeVries said.
In-Game Adjustments
DeVries talked about the recent success of his team out of timeouts and how successful they have been at turning those opportunities into points.
DeVries said they have installed about 80 percent of their playbook, but they go into each game with a much smaller number of plays they want to run.
"We have, I would say it’s 80 percent of the playbook in, but in terms of what we’ve ran so far, we haven't ran a lot of it… when we get ready for a specific game, we go over maybe 15 plays," DeVries said.
DeVries said a lot of plays called during the game are taken from input from the players on the court, but specifically Tucker because of his tenure in DeVries' system.
"I want their input because they’re out there, and they have a really good feel for how they’re being guarded. Specifically, Tucker because he’s been in our system for his fourth year now… I love getting input from the guys throughout the course of a game," DeVries said.
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