West Virginia men's basketball may have been shockingly excluded from the NCAA Tournament, but the Mountaineers still should be proud of the end result of their 2024-2025 season.
WVU Head Coach Darian DeVries took over a program on it's third coach in three seasons that won just nine games the previous year. The Mountaineers returned zero minutes from their active roster the previous season to their active roster this season -- Ofri Naveh was the sole basketball-only player that returned from the previous roster, and ended up as a redshirt this season.
WVU pieced together a roster in the transfer portal which still lacked the depth and size a coach would need in the Big 12, and then lost a potential starter who averaged over 20 points per game the previous season before the first official game. Not long after, their starting forward and second-leading scorer, Tucker DeVries, was sidelined for the season with injury.
Despite this, DeVries took the team to the brink of the NCAA Tournament, finishing 19-13 overall and 10-10 in conference play -- he guided his new program to more conference wins than they had total wins the year prior with a makeshift roster hampered by injury to an eight-man rotation.
So it's only fitting that Darian DeVries was named the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) East District Co-Coach of the Year on Tuesday for the impressive effort he put forth with the Mountaineers this season.
It's also fitting that the same set of accolades included NABC East District First-Team honors for senior guard Javon Small, who used his sole season in a WVU uniform to turn himself into one of the most dynamic offensive threats and court generals in college basketball and develop into a potential NBA Draft selection. Small averaged 18.6 points per game, 5.6 assists, and 4.1 rebounds per game for the Mountaineers.
NABC All-District honors are voted on by NABC-member coaches across NCAA Division I. Coach of the Year and First-Team and Second-Team honors are awarded across 10 distinct geographically designed districts.