West Virginia is in year one of the Darian DeVries era, but the Mountaineers have already made some waves.
The program sits at 6-2 overall and is coming off an impressive showing in the Bahamas at the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament where the Mountaineers played three consecutive overtime games. West Virginia beat No. 3 Gonzaga and No. 24 Arizona on a neutral floor but fell to Louisville to finish in third place.
The win over the Bulldogs especially holds weight considering that they’re perched at No. 3 in the initial NET Rankings, and it occurred on a neutral floor. The showing propelled the Mountaineers to No. 37 in the rankings used to determine the NCAA field and on solid footing heading into the conclusion of non-conference play.
Overall, West Virginia is 2-1 in quadrant one games with that win over Gonzaga and Arizona but losses to No. 17 Pittsburgh on the road and No. 53 Louisville on a neutral floor. But more importantly, there aren’t any bad losses.
West Virginia still has home games against No. 276 North Carolina Central, No. 275 Bethune-Cookman and No. 321 Mercyhurst to conclude the non-conference slate.
None of those are going to necessarily raise the profile of the Mountaineers at this stage of the process but after that the Big 12 Conference schedule awaits.
That is going to present plenty of opportunities for the Mountaineers as the program opens on the road at No. 15 Kansas and it won’t get a whole lot easier from there.
In the month of January alone, West Virginia will have dates with No. 100 Oklahoma State, a rematch at home with No. 45 Arizona, road trips to No. 83 Colorado and No. 8 Houston, home matchups with No. 13 Iowa State and No. 33 Arizona State, an away game with No. 103 Kansas State and a home game with No. 8 Houston.
The rest of the schedule includes matchups home and away with No. 21 Cincinnati, No. 61 BYU, No. 66 Utah and No. 121 TCU. Then home games with No. 27 Texas Tech, No. 86 UCF and a road game at No. 30 Baylor.
That means this team is going to have plenty of opportunities to prove that they belong toward the upper half of the NET rankings as the season proceeds.
Still, that’s a long way off and for now, the team is focused solely on the task at hand. And that’s simply getting better day by day and realizing that they haven’t arrived at any point.
“We still have plenty of room to grow into and we look forward to continuing to do that. It’s a long season, there’s ups and downs with every season,” DeVries said. “We have to grow together. This is a part of it.”
