West Virginia is without a head basketball coach for the third time in 21 months.
Darian DeVries, who was hired less than a calendar year ago, is off to Indiana after one 19-13 season with the Mountaineers sending the program back into the search process to find his replacement.
Athletic Director Wren Baker will lead that search once again and fortunately, he has experience running each of the previous two that landed on an interim tag for Josh Eilert and DeVries.
And while that process will play out in due time as Baker has taken a be quick, but don’t hurry approach to all of his previous coaching searches in Morgantown the next question becomes what happens with the remaining roster? That truly can’t be answered until a new hire is made, but the Mountaineers are once again operating with the opening of the transfer portal window on the horizon.
The portal will open March 24 and there's already been movement on the roster.
West Virginia has already experienced several roster casualties with freshman guard Jonathan Powell the first to exit prior to DeVries announcing his own departure. It should come as no surprise that Devries’ son Tucker, the two-time Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year, will join his father at Indiana after a season where he was limited to just eight games but averaged 14.9 points and 4.9 rebounds per game.
Throw on top that Castaic (Ca.) Southern California Academy guard Kelvin Odih opening up his recruitment and the roster has already shrunk in considerable numbers. Odih, 6-foot-5, 200-pounds, was considered one of the nation’s top two-way guards and was rated as the 77th-best prospect nationally by Rivals.com.
SoCal Prep forward Trent MacLean was one of the fastest risers in the 2025 class, but he too has requested his release from his letter of intent.
The Mountaineers still have one high-profile prospect in the class in Huntington Prep (W.Va.) forward Braydon Hawthorne but without a coaching staff in place, it remains to be seen what unfolds there on the recruiting trail.
As for the rest of the roster, the Mountaineers still have players such as junior forward Amani Hansberry, junior guard Sencire Harris, sophomore guard KJ Tenner, redshirt freshman center Abraham Oyeadier, senior forward Haris Elezovich, and redshirt sophomore Ofri Naveh but again it’s unclear what happens there, too.
"I hope our underclassmen give our new coach a chance to come in and give them a recruiting pitch. I can promise them we'll be resourced competitively within the Big 12 and nationally, and we'll find a coach who's committed to them and committed to this university and this state," Baker said.
A new coaching staff is going to evaluate everything differently and there is a real chance even if some elect to stick with the program that West Virginia is going to be rebuilding close to an entire roster for the second straight season.
It’s just the nature for college basketball programs to experience a lot of turnover from year to year even without a coaching change, but with one it’s made things even more difficult to navigate.
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