Step Back: Taking hard look at WVU hoops

West Virginia University’s Javon Small puts down a two-handed dunk during a game earlier this season in Morgantown. (Photo by BlueGoldNews.com)

MORGANTOWN– With West Virginia’s first non-conference basketball season now nothing but a dusty page in the history books of time, it is time to take a hard look at the team that will return from an unusually long Christmas holiday break to play at Kansas on New Year’s Eve.

It could not have asked for much more than the 9-2 record it brings with it into the season that really counts, even though you’d like to believe that the Battle 4 Atlantis loss to Louisville was also in a game they could have and probably should have won, but this being sports you win some, you lose some and some just make no sense at all.

Is this team made up of a group of strangers who were thrown together on the train of life a half year ago, the result of some bad turns from Bob Huggins at the wrong time and place in his Hall of Fame career, by a forced year that was every bit as lost as was the COVID year a half decade earlier, and then the hiring of Darian DeVries to recreate the aura the program had produced from Rod Hundley and Jerry West forward, ready for what awaits it?

Yes.

And no.

They are probably better than they have any right to be and, at the same time, they are not where they want to be.

Who says so?

Their coach, the former Drake mentor has gerrymandered together a group of players who rise maybe above their talent level but not above their potential.

“Even with the start of conference play, we are not a finished product by any means,” DeVries said before releasing his team for the holiday season on Sunday evening.

“Hopefully, we are not a finished product until the final buzzer of the season sounds; that we are continuing to grow and get better,” he added.

There is no reason to doubt DeVries. Non-conference schedules all differ and they offer different highs and lows. WVU’s goes from North Carolina Central to Gonzaga. They have shown an ability to be better than themselves and to be worse, but they are doing it more on intensity and integrity than on any All-American talent.

“The thing I liked the most is this team has grown with confidence,” DeVries said. “They believe in each other. They believe in what we are trying to do. They are playing, especially defensively, to an identity we want to have and that’s being tough and physical and playing aggressively while moving the ball on offense. We just have to continue to grow in all areas.”

Their spirit makes up for the many injuries that seem to be plaguing them, a couple of them of such uncertain nature that no one really knows if the coach’s son and the man who acts as a coach on the floor, Tucker DeVries, or Jayden Stone, an Australian who averaged more than 20 points a game on a Detroit Mercy team a year ago that could win only one game, will play anymore this season.

Tucker DeVries was a proven product, the Missouri Valley Player of the Year, another 20-point scorer who could stretch the defense to near the half court line with his long-range bombs, a force on defense who would deflect balls and somehow was leading the team on blocked shots, when his surgically repaired shoulder became a problem.

Stone never has played a minute beyond the exhibition game with a head injury and DeVries has not been forthcoming with in-depth reports on his recovery or progress, perhaps thinking that they both may redshirt.

On the other hand, the transfer from Oklahoma State, Javon Small, has looked as if he can be all that so many WVU guards over the years have been as he leads the team in scoring at 19.7 points a game, in assists with 53, and in steals with 23.

With the younger DeVries, who averages 14.7 points despite the injury and has hit on 47.3% of his 3-point tries, they give WVU a solid backcourt while a couple of freshmen in Jonathan Powell and KJ Tenner are combined in averaging 12.8 points a game with Powell a close third to Small and DeVries on 3-point scoring with 24 of them.

Much of the offense has come from the defense, which is always pressuring somehow without trying to mimic Huggins’ Press Virginia days.

Sencire Harris has been every bit the defender he was advertised as, a hard worker who can guard anyone on the floor, pumping air and life into the defense, but with 25 consecutive missed 3’s this season, he might think about taking that out of his bag of tricks and leave the 3’s to the shooters.

While DeVries did not offer much concern following the Mercyhurst victory, one of his most important managed to play only the first 52 seconds of the game before leaving with an ankle injury that had him leaving the Coliseum with his foot in a walking boot.

“I don’t think it’s anything serious,” DeVries said. “He should be good.”

He does have time to heal, but he is key to both the offense that DeVries runs, being a 6-8 big man who can pop 3s, taking a potential shot block out to guard him when he goes into 3-point land.

Hansberry also offers rebounding and that is most important for if this team has one area that DeVries is concerned about, it’s the defensive rebounding.

The Big 12 is a physical league where whoever rules the boards usually rules the floor and WVU went into that final non-conference game Sunday with 374 total rebounds, exactly the same number it had allowed to its opponents.

They did outrebound a smaller Mercyhurst team, but only by 3 and DeVries continues to emphasize that is the area that needs the most work.

They do have a inside force in Eduardo Andre, a 6-11, 240-pound hard-worker Londoner from England, who is averaging 4.4 rebounds and has 23 blocks in just 15 minutes playing time per game, minutes that will take a significant swing upward if Hansberry’s report on his ankle comes back more serious than expected.

Can he play 40 minutes?

“If asked, I can play whatever they want,” he said.

“I think he did good,” DeVries said of Andre after the game. “They did a lot of switching, which keeps you out of some rhythm, but I think we were able to throw it in there some and he was able to make plays for himself. He got fouled a few times and then had a couple of nice assists on kick-outs.”

Add in the versatile fifth starter in Toby Okani, who does a little bit of everything that adds up to a whole lot on both sides of the ball and you have a lot more potential from a brand new team than you would expect.

But this is a new season, the Big 12 season, and they open with Kansas before coming home for a pair of games against Oklahoma State and Arizona, whom they defeated in a preseason tournament in overtime.