West Virginia head coach Darian DeVries has avoided the big picture topics throughout the course of the year. But that wasn’t the case after the 72-65 win over UCF to close the regular season.
“There is no doubt now. They punched their ticket tonight. They’re in the tournament. Now it’s postseason play. Let's go try to win a championship game down in Kansas City and when that’s done let’s go play as long as we can,” he said. “That’s exciting for them to know they’re going to see their name up there on Selection Sunday and they deserve it. They’re earned it and they left no doubt.”
The Mountaineers entered the final week of the season with a chance to cement their status and that’s exactly what they were able to accomplish going 2-0 with a road win at Utah and then beating UCF. That pushed the overall record to 19-12 and 10-10 in Big 12 Conference play, good enough for the eighth seed and a first round bye in the league tournament.
That first round bye means that West Virginia won’t play until Wednesday and will get the winner of TCU and Colorado, which ironically played in the final game of the season. The Buffaloes' 76-56 win over the Horned Frogs is why the Mountaineers are in this position with their win over UCF.
“It’s huge for us. Twenty games is a lot with our rotations being a little bit shorter. I think getting that extra day from a timing standpoint is huge,” he said. “You’ve had 20-straight games. No off-days, no bye weeks, none of that so for us to get one extra day where we can kind of regroup a little bit and let the legs get underneath us and then get them fresh and ready to play on Wednesday.”
The goal for West Virginia is to play as many games as possible in the event prior to the NCAA Tournament and the Mountaineers will prepare for both potential matchups until it’s clear which one that they will be squaring off against. If they are able to get past that game, No. 1 Houston awaits.
After that the NCAA Tournament is on the horizon, and while many believed that likely wasn’t in the cards prior to the season, that is why DeVries doesn’t like to place any sort of expectations on his teams before or during the season.
While this team showed glimpses of their potential in the Bahamas, things shifted drastically when Tucker DeVries was lost for the season, but the group was able to reset and continued to believe in each other and compete in a difficult league.
“I never wanted to limit them on what they’re capable of and we’ve had some great, great moments this year. We had a few we felt let get away but overall I just love that this group continues to fight and stay together and we need to continue to do that as we get into post-season play,” he said.
That fight was evident even after the UCF win when the locker room was obviously excited but not as much as it could have been after allowing a 27-point lead to slip away and having to fight hard down the stretch to close it out.
“They’re excited, they know now we’re getting ready for big 12 play and post season play and this is the best time of the year so they’ll be ready to go,” DeVries said.
You want to be playing your best at this stage of the season and DeVries likes that his team has knocked down shots in back-to-back games, but will need to continue to do that. Hitting shots has been a challenge at times, but if they’re able to continue to play improved offense with a stingy defense, it could lead to success for this team.
And while reaching the tournament is certainly an accomplishment, that alone isn’t what DeVries wants this team to hang their hats on heading into the most important time of the year.
“That’s not the end game, we want to finish the job and that means we want to play as long as possible. We will go to the Big 12 Tournament, play as many games as we can there and then get ready for the NCAA Tournament. We’re in work mode, we're going to try to win and compete and go try to win those 40 minutes for as many of them as we can,” DeVries said.
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