Tucker DeVries and his father, Darian DeVries, have spent ample time working together over the years on the basketball court.
Tucker played for his dad for three seasons at Drake University, achieving significant success: winning accolades, conference championships, and making a couple of NCAA tournament appearances. Darian coached at Drake for six seasons and will now be the head coach for the Mountaineers, looking to continue that success.
Big 12 Media Day started this afternoon, where we got to hear from Tucker on why he believes Morgantown was the perfect fit for both him and his father: “It was a place he saw a lot of potential in, a place he thought he could succeed in and I was very supportive of that, and willing to do whatever, to make that final jump for him and myself for this final year.”
His situation was compared to one seen in the Big 12 football world with Colorado head coach Deion Sanders and his son, Shedeur, who plays quarterback for him. A reporter asked how Tucker balances “Dad versus Coach.” Tucker replied, “On the court we try to keep it as normal as possible… off the court obviously it trickles over a little bit, but again we try to keep it as normal as possible.”
Tucker stated, “Our life revolves around it (basketball),” and when asked if conversations about games came up at home, he answered, “Naturally it comes up quite a bit, but we will probably talk about it more when we are winning…”
Speaking about his new teammates, he said, “For everybody on our team, it is just finding ways to help each other out. Everybody’s different, everybody’s new. I’m the only one from last year’s team with my dad… I think we have made a lot of progress over the last few months.”
A big question for a team full of new transfers and true freshmen from a variety of places is going to be the team chemistry. WVU will return one lone player from last year’s roster, Ofri Naveh.
When asked about how the team chemistry has evolved, Tucker said, “The great thing about this group is that it’s a pretty veteran group that really wants to win. I think in practice every day you can tell how desperate everybody is to work and get to the point we need to be, come the season time… When you see everybody going through and working really hard, it actually kind of builds that team chemistry, on and off the court. Off the court it is just spending a lot of time together, whether it’s going bowling or just hanging out watching games… it’s a great group to be around.”
Javon Small, a new teammate of Tucker’s and a first-year Mountaineer, transferred from Big 12 opponent Oklahoma State, giving him a lot of familiarity with playing in one of the toughest conferences in the nation.
Tucker was asked what he and his dad have learned from Javon about playing in this conference: “He basically just told us you gotta go out there and be you and be aggressive. It’s a physical league obviously, but if you play confidently and physically you can hold your own no matter who you are. We are going to try and be ourselves and match up with some of these great teams in this league, and I feel the work we put in is going to put us in a great spot.”
West Virginia enjoyed a blowout win in their exhibition match against the University of Charleston last Friday and will open up their regular season on Monday, Nov. 4, versus Robert Morris, home at the Coliseum. Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m.
