West Virginia head coach Darian DeVries has been consistent with the message to his basketball team down the stretch run of the season.
And that communication has simply been that the Mountaineers are still playing for something significant.
That is especially true now, as the team enters the most critical stage of the year with two regular season games remaining and still plenty left to accomplish if this group wants to reach its goals.
West Virginia sits at 17-12 overall and 8-10 in the Big 12 Conference, currently perched in ninth place just outside a potential first round bye in the league tournament. But more importantly, despite a rough stretch that has seen the program drop eight of their last 12 games, the Mountaineers are still very solidly in the NCAA Tournament field entering the final week of the regular season.
That’s in large part due to their metrics as West Virginia is 5-10 in quadrant one contests and 4-2 in quadrant two matchups in the NCAA Net Rankings. That tool is used as the primary method for determining where a team fits into the tournament seeding and going 9-12 in those two brackets without a loss in the quadrant three and four games is a compelling argument for inclusion.
As of now, West Virginia is safely off the bubble and isn’t even considered in the last bye section of teams as they were perched around the 10 line depending on what projection you’re using. But there’s still a lot left to play out over the final week of the regular season and the conference tournament so that means that the resume still needs a few more bullet points.
At this stage of the process, it’s unlikely that those 17 wins are enough alone to place West Virginia in the field especially if they aren’t able to net a few more down the stretch. Given the state of the bubble teams this season, the Mountaineers have a stronger resume than most but realistically a 17-14 season heading into the Big 12 Tournament would be plenty of cause for nervousness.
That makes the final two games of the year on the road at Utah Tuesday and at home against UCF perhaps the most important of the season for the Mountaineers.
The road trip at Utah provides yet another quadrant one opportunity as the Utes are perched at No. 64 in the NET falling under that cutoff at 75 to qualify on the road. That’s a potentially massive resume builder at this late stage of the season against a team that West Virginia has already beaten at home.
Utah is currently 16-13 and is led by former West Virginia interim head coach Josh Eilert but recording quadrant one victories isn’t easy to come by so that’s no walk in the park.
The final contest against UCF isn’t the same type of opportunity but is critical too because it would give the Mountaineers a potential loss in those final two games. That, much like the Cincinnati and TCU home contests before it, is almost a must-win type of matchup regardless of what unfolds against Utah given the fact that a loss would hurt more than necessarily what the win would do.
UCF is 15-14 on the season and it will be the first meeting between the two.
Of course, the conference tournament also will provide some additional opportunities for West Virginia to further bolster their case but it would make all parties involved in Morgantown a little more comfortable if they didn’t need to do anything in Kansas City to solidify their spot. However, that would mean winning two games in a row for the first time since Dec. 31 and Jan. 4 but the blueprint is there.
Playing games that matter in March is the goal of every college basketball program and West Virginia has a chance to essentially cement their status in the first year under DeVries if they can take care of business this week on the court.
The Mountaineers are playing games that matter and essentially can control their own destiny if they are able to close the season on a high note.
----------
• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.
• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.
• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel
• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan, @wesleyshoe
