This has not been a very good week for West Virginia basketball. It began with the crew being snubbed for the NCAA Event in a extremely controversial choice by the choice committee that put North Carolina in forward of the Mountaineers.
It continued on Tuesday with the information that head coach Darian DeVries is leaving this system after only one season.
Devries was employed by Indiana to take over its males’s basketball program.
Not solely is West Virginia dropping its coach, it might additionally instantly result in this system dropping one in every of its high gamers, Tucker DeVries, who additionally occurs to be the son of its now former head coach.
DeVries performed three seasons at Drake, the place his dad coached previous to West Virginia, after which adopted him to Morgantown for the 2024-25 season.
It’s solely potential — if unlikely — that he’ll observe his dad once more.
He performed in simply eight video games this season earlier than having his season finish attributable to an harm. He averaged 14.9 points per game and has been an excellent scorer his complete collegiate profession.
Whether or not Tucker DeVries transfers or not, having to get again into the head-coaching cycle is simply one other gut-punch this week for a program that’s not catching a break anyplace. Particularly when issues appeared to be entering into the correct course after some actually robust years.
DeVries did an excellent job in quickly rebuilding West Virginia’s program in only one 12 months, taking it from 9 wins in 2023-24 to 19 wins this season, together with six Quad 1 wins and three wins over AP top-10 groups.
Previous to his time at West Virginia he led Drake to a few NCAA match appearances in his final 4 years working that program, and doubtless ought to have been there this season in his solely 12 months with the Mountaineers.
He’s now taking on a once-proud Indiana program that has certified for the NCAA match in simply two of the previous 9 seasons.
All of this implies subsequent season West Virginia can have its fourth totally different head coach in 4 seasons.
Bob Huggins coached the 2022-23 season however resigned after a sequence of controversies that included him making homophobic feedback and anti-Catholic sentiments on a radio present, which was then adopted by a DUI incident a couple of weeks later.
That led to Josh Eilert taking on for the 2023-24 season, leading to a nine-win season.
That was adopted by DeVries for this season.
