West Virginia head coach Darian DeVries doesn’t have any doubts that his basketball team is worthy of a spot in the NCAA Tournament if the season were to end today.
But with four regular season games left, there’s still plenty to play for to see if the Mountaineers remain in that same category.
At 16-11 overall and 7-9 in the Big 12, the West Virginia resume has the program with a 5-9 record in quadrant one contests, and the Mountaineers have yet to sustain a quadrant three or four defeat.
“Overall let’s just go win. Go win a game. Go try to win the next one just go do that to finish out the year. I believe we have a tournament team. We have a tournament resume that stands up really well, but we’ve just got to continue to play and finish the season off,” DeVries said.
The first-year West Virginia headman said that he doesn’t focus on the big picture with his team outside of simply telling them that they are still playing for something. But instead, the focus is squarely on what is next and for the Mountaineers that is a rematch with a TCU team that won the first meeting 65-60.
“We’ve just got to continue to do our part and know that these are meaningful games and find ways to continue to put some wins up there,” DeVries said. “That’s our goal every night obviously and our next goal is to try to do that against TCU.”
In that first matchup, West Virginia held a 12-point edge in the first half but with around six minutes remaining the Horned Frogs used a run to narrow that margin to just a single point at halftime. From there, TCU was able to build their own double-digit advantage before the Mountaineers rallied but fell just short.
TCU was not only able to get to the rim but shot 18 more free throw attempts and made 20 of 23 from the line.
“We can’t have that and expect to win games, especially on the road, so we’ve got to do a better job of keeping them off the free throw line and part of that is keeping the ball in front of us,” DeVries said.
Like any second meeting with a team, West Virginia is expecting to see some wrinkles put into the gameplan, but overall teams are what they are at this stage of the season. That means the Mountaineers will need to rely on their principles on both ends of the floor if they want to flip the script against TCU.
That starts on the defensive end where West Virginia must have constant play every night but on offense the Mountaineers have to continue to trust their ability to take and make open shots in the offense. And finding somebody that can help with the scoring along with senior point guard Javon Small will be key.
“Whenever we get that second or third guy that’s a huge deal for our offense whether it be Joe (Yesufu), J(onathan) P(owell) or Toby (Okani) or Amani (Hansberry). Just getting a combination of guys where they’re getting 8-12 points makes a huge difference for us,” he said.
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