A long off-season is coming to a close and the West Virginia is excited to get the season started.
The Mountaineers will open the 2024-25 campaign against Robert Morris, with Friday beginning the start of the basketball team getting into game prep mode with their scout.
“Then it stays that way until March. But our guys are excited to get out there and play,” head coach Darian DeVries said.
The head coach tries to keep his team on a routine when it comes to preparing for games with the same film work, the same approach and review in order to maintain consistency throughout the year.
West Virginia has a good idea of what the rotation is going to look like to open the year with the head coach suggesting it will be anywhere from 8-10 players although that is never set in stone. With injuries and other opportunities that can arise, DeVries keeps his players focused on the fact that those could be there.
“Just playing well in practice and continue to put yourself fin the best position possible,” he said.
One player who won’t be part of that rotation to start the season is guard Jayden Stone who will be out for a period of time due to an upper body injury. Stone was injured in practice and his status will be day-to-day as he progresses throughout the course of the non-conference schedule.
On the offensive end of the floor, expect West Virginia to try to take advantage of what the defense is going to give them depending on the matchup. The Mountaineers won’t set out to do one particular thing and will need to be flexible and showcase the ability to pivot depending on what the opposition is doing.
The offense is going to operate the same from game to game but how they attack could vary with each opponent on the schedule. The plan is to make sure guys aren’t being robotic and instead trusting their instincts to be more effective and faster on that end of the floor.
“I don't think you want to be stubborn on that, in my opinion, as an offense. We want to be as flexible as possible,” DeVries said.
The playbook is rather extensive, but the focus will be to go into each game with around 10-15 types of plays that they think will work against each opponent to rep in practice. That will be the primary focus, but during a game the coaching staff could decide to pull something else out depending on what unfolds.
“I think they're playing very unselfishly and together. So, I'm excited to see as we get into games now just being able to do that for 40 minutes every single night is our challenge,” DeVries said.
West Virginia isn’t going to be experimenting a lot in the early season portion of the schedule and instead will be focusing on what they need to do to win each ball game. This off-season featured a total of 12 new scholarship players being thrown into the mix so there was a lot of time spent on installing on both the offensive and defensive ends of the floor compared to some of his teams at Drake which returned a lot.
Overall, DeVries likes how his team has been playing unselfishly together and now he is excited to see how that translates into game settings. Each team is going to have times when they struggle, but the focus will be on how they respond in those situations beginning with the opener.
“Right now I'm excited. I can't wait to go play, get our guys out there in front of everybody and go compete,” he said.
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