DeVries Quick Hits: Defense, Second Half Struggles and Turnovers

After leading by 17 points at halftime, West Virginia defeated UMass 75-69 on Friday.

After the game, WVU head coach Darian DeVries cited defensive efforts, second-half struggles and turnovers leading to the outcome.

While the Mountaineers had points of struggle on offense throughout the game, the defense kept them afloat. They forced 15 turnovers and kept UMass to under 30% from beyond the arc.

“I thought the first half defensively we were really pretty good. And because of that I thought it really affected our offense we were able to get out get in transition off of creating some turnovers,” DeVries said.

However, in the second half, the West Virginia had times where they struggled to get a stop, which DeVries believes impacted the offense.

“The second half, especially the first 10 minutes or so, we weren’t getting stops, took away our transition game and allowed them to hang around and then then it got tight,” DeVries said. ” But overall I thought we responded again late defensively. Made some big plays there to be able to get some stops to seal the game off.”

The second half overall, wasn’t the best showing by WVU. They were out-scored 41-30 as UMass made the game interesting, but still West Virginia manged to hang on for the win.

“You go six for 24 in the second half and shoot 25% you don’t win many of those games typically. So, finding a way to win ugly is is is a quality too,” DeVries said.

While WVU still won the turnover battle, they committed 14, eight of them in the second half. DeVries was disappointed with the amount of turnovers his team had, believing it was there biggest issue in the win.

“Our biggest issue tonight was just the turnovers. We’re a team that takes a lot of pride in taking care of the ball and 14 turnovers is just it’s too much for us,” DeVries said. “We got to do a better job there. Especially late in the game. We have a chance to kind of seal it away and make it a little less stressful, but we had some untimely turnovers there to finish it.”

The Mountaineers will travel north to take on Pitt in the Backyard Brawl in their next contest on Friday, Nov. 15.