The West Virginia basketball team has done a good job this season of staying focused.
That’s going to be put to the test as the Mountaineers look to move past the win over Kansas and onto a talented Oklahoma State team that is set to come to the Coliseum.
Head coach Darian DeVries has been impressed with his team’s ability to stay grounded and take a workman-like approach from game to game but the win over the Jayhawks is one that obviously sets up to make things difficult given how that contest unfolded.
That’s certainly an impressive win, but just one of 20 in the Big 12.
So, to combat that the coaching staff has taken the approach that while it was certainly a great win on the resume for the Mountaineers it was just a single game in a season full of them. It’s a lesson that comes with the game of basketball that there simply isn’t a lot of time to dwell and you must move on.
“That was a great moment for us but we have a new task at hand and we turn that page pretty quickly,” DeVries said. “We enjoyed it for the appropriate amount of time but now we’ve got another Big 12 opponent.”
Win or lose, it’s critical to show that ability because if you do hold onto the previous result too long it can impact your preparation and scout for what lies ahead.
‘You have to have the discipline to move on,” DeVries said.
DeVries was able to see that unfold firsthand when he worked under Dana Altman and Doug McDermott. Both coaches were consistent and never got too high or too low while approaching the job the same no matter what unfolded. The seasons are long and challenging on many different fronts so finding a way to keep an even keel is key.
That makes trying to avoid all of the praise that the team has been getting this week critical because there are still plenty of places where this team can improve including with the movement and flow on the offensive end of the floor where the Mountaineers have experienced droughts at times.
The Cowboys will present challenges in the sense that they are aggressive, especially defensively, and have shown the ability to create a lot of turnovers. On the offensive end, they will attack the rim and try to get into transition to make that occur.
So the focus is making sure this team understands that while this week was a good win for a lot of different reasons there’s still plenty of work left to do.
“We also want them to know that, hey, there's a lot of things we can still get better at too, and to make that a little bit of our focus as we head into this home game on Saturday,” DeVries said.
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