West Virginia men’s basketball ruined Utah’s first-ever trip to Morgantown and captured a much-needed victory on their homecourt Saturday evening in a dogfight over the Utes.
The Mountaineers never had the game comfortably secured until the final minute of the game, and it took double-digit scoring efforts from a quartet of players -- freshman Jonathan Powell (11 points) and senior Javon Small (14 points) joined leading scorer sophomore Amani Hansberry (17 points) in that category and were joined off the bench (a day early, perhaps) by “Sunday” Joe Yesufu (14 points) in his best non-Sabbath performance of the season.
But what was on display front-and-center for an otherwise routine but always welcome win against Big 12 Conference competition was that WVU’s first-year head coach Darian DeVries might be the next star coach in NCAA Basketball.
The Mountaineers faced a disadvantage in both size and depth on Saturday -- The Utes have one of the largest rotations in the sport, with the shortest player in the starting lineup at 6 foot, 6 inches. Meanwhile, WVU’s tallest player in their starting line stands just 6 foot, 8 inches, with only three starters standing above 6'6. They also featured little contribution from 6 foot, 11 inch backup center Eduardo Andre.
Utah also were able to feed themselves players from a 10-man rotation to stay fresh, with all 10 of those athletes logging 14 minutes or more. Meanwhile, WVU had just an 8-man rotation to run with, and 2-of-8 players played 10 minutes or less in total.
But the Mountaineers managed to turn this usually obvious disadvantage into an unexpected advantage, as DeVries was able to use multiple size mismatches to outscheme the over-sized Utes and create scoring opportunities inside the paint -- they were able to nearly match Utah in points in the paint, scoring 24 to the Utes’ 28.
Hansberry was able to use his athleticism to stretch the floor and put Utah’s bigger defenders in tough positions, and he put down a trio of three-point buckets in the process to contribute towards his big scoring effort. WVU also hung tightly with Utah on the boards, gaining 33 rebounds to Utah’s 35 and out-rebounding them defensively 27-to-26.
Country roads take me home 🏠
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WVU vs Utah Highlights 🎥👀#Big12MBB | @WVUhoops pic.twitter.com/nBUJ4uTyWY
"These last few weeks, to be honest, we've added a lot of stuff, and we've had to just to adjust to the way the lineups have been and things," DeVries said after the win. "Our staff does a really good job, and myself, we're always going through and typing in on Twitter or whatever, different types of plays, or you see them on a timeline or watching film...we almost have too much sometimes."
"{Defensively] I thought for us tonight it was, again, not letting them get into spots where that becomes there advantage. Trying to keep it out of the paint, being physical and tough," he added about guarding a team with Utah's size.
It's not the first time this season DeVries has out-schemed an opposing coach, and it likely won’t be the last. Despite having a banged-up, undersized roster which was pieced together via the transfer portal and is missing its second-best scorer and down two players for the season, he keeps finding ways to do it. And at this point, it's getting hard to argue that DeVries isn’t destined to be something special in college basketball.