Any way you slice it, the 2024-25 season for the West Virginia men’s basketball program was a major success.
Regardless of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee’s inconceivable decision to leave the Mountaineers out of the field, no preseason predictions envisioned this program having the kind of year that they were able to have -- and it proves that a talented new coach can come in, rebuild a roster, and find quick success in Morgantown.
Here are the facts of the Mountaineers’ 2024-25 season
1. They entered the season with a brand new coaching staff led by Darian DeVries who has since departed for Indiana.
2. Their rotation of starters and bench players was entirely comprised of transfers and incoming freshmen. No one who played for the Mountaineers in the season prior played a single minute for WVU.
3. The Mountaineers finished with a .500 record in Big 12 play at 10-10.
4. West Virginia picked up signature wins over the No. 2 Iowa State Cyclones, No. 3 Gonzaga Bulldogs, No. 7 Kansas Jayhawks (at Allen Fieldhouse for the first time in school history), and the No. 24 Arizona Wildcats.
Rebuilding the roster for the 2025-26 Mountaineers
Two facts that we know about the 2025-26 Mountaineers is that the first two facts listed above will be a similar if not identical reality for this team. After the departure of Darian DeVries, West Virginia’s AD Wren Baker hired North Texas Head Coach Ross Hodge to lead the men’s basketball program in Morgantown.
In the new age of college basketball, West Virginia is not the only major conference program that has learned that the portal “giveth” and the portal “taketh away.”
Below you will find the damage done to the WVU roster as the calendar turns to April and the Final Four has yet to be played.
Javon Small - Out of Eligibility
Toby Okani - Out of Eligibility
Joseph Yesufu - Out of Eligibility
Eduardo Andre - Out of Eligibility
Tucker DeVries - Transferring to Indiana
Sencire Harris - Entered into transfer portal
Amani Hansberry - Entered into transfer portal
Jonathan Powell - Entered into transfer portal
KJ Tenner - Entered into transfer portal
Yikes -- practically the entirety of West Virginia’s roster is either out of eligibility or currently in the transfer portal. Six players officially remain, but only three scholarship players remain that are likely to return, and only two players (Ofri Naveh and Haris Elezovic) stand to return who have seen action in a WVU uniform.
The question that remains to be answered, and one that won't be until months from now, is whether or not the West Virginia men’s basketball program can once again go from an entirely new slate of coaches and players to competing at a high level in the Big 12.
Darian DeVries and his leadership turned enough heads that he was offered the head coaching job at Indiana at season’s end. With first-year head coach Ross Hodge now at the helm, Mountaineer fans are hopeful that he and his staff’s work in the portal will lead West Virginia into a bright future.
All-Big-12 performers like Javon Small do not just grow on trees. His one year with the Mountaineers was sensational. To expect to find someone in the portal to have the kind of season that Small had might be just a bit unrealistic. However, the reality is that Hodge and his staff will have to find Big 12 caliber talent that fits the defensive-minded system of the new head coach.
There is no doubt that one of the more special stories around all of college basketball in 2024-25 is the success of an entirely new roster at WVU. But can the program do it again?