The season may be months out for head coach Darian DeVries and the WVU basketball team, but the offseason is in full swing with team practices and more recruiting. The new Mountaineer head coach went on the 3 Guys Podcast to talk all about his hiring and recruitment pitch he has made to players.
During his time on the show, DeVries went into some great detail about why West Virginia was a destination he wanted to take his coaching talents to. The midwest native grew up in the midwest and never coached outside of it at Creighton and Drake.
Once he heard about the state and its people, he knew moving his family to the Mountains was something that would work for him.
“I’ve only heard of West Virginia from afar. I didn’t know the ins and outs of it and all the details of it. So my knowledge of it was just a good basketball program somewhere out East. But that was genuinely it.”
DeVries then added,
“When you start to get a little more serious about it, and look into it a little bit more, you find out some of those daily things that you’re going to have and what that looks like. There’s just a lot of things that make a lot of sense.”
After discussing what made West Virginia intriguing to him, DeVries dove deep into what he uses to make West Virginia and his teams eye-catching to recruits. Maybe an unconventional style, DeVries doesn’t guarantee anything on the court to the players, instead he promises a growth in the man they will become.
“We don’t promise things to them. We don’t promise playing time, we don’t promise starting positions. We promise that we’re going to try to maximize their individual abilities that fit into a team setting. And if this is a place you want to come, you want to be around other good guys that you enjoy being in that locker room on a daily basis, then at the end of the day when your career is done, our goal is to make sure we’ve maximized everything that is in the body.”
He continued saying,
“And I think they all fit together on the floor and off the floor. When you can be as good as you can be in every phase of your life, I think it gives you the best chance to go beyond and play professionally. And if not play professionally, you’re set up for life without basketball too.”
The upcoming season will be the first as the head coach of the Mountaineers and the first at the power-five level for DeVries. The challenge will be tough as he is inheriting the team after one of the worst seasons the program has ever experienced.
So when Tony Caridi asked DeVries what was a realistic goal for the team to eventually get to, the new head coach wasn’t afraid to take anything off the board including a National Championship.
“Realistically, everything’s on the table. I don’t think you should have anything that you don’t feel like you can achieve here. There’s no reason to not have those expectations to try to get there (National Championship).”
Fans are certainly excited for DeVries to look to bring the basketball program at WVu back to its glory days, competing for championships.
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