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Darien DeVries offers 1st glimpse into new-look WVU basketball team

MORGANTOWN, W.Va — West Virginia’s new basketball coach Darien DeVries offered a rare glimpse into his first basketball team as Mountaineer coach on Tuesday by opening it to the media, but if you are expecting any meaningful predictions, conclusions or observations, you have come to the wrong place.

About the only thing that was learned for sure is that today’s sneakers squeak louder than ever as players start, stop and jump. The increase in volume may even surpass the increase in price.

It is, after all, only mid-July. Basketball, like pumpkins, is out of season at the present moment, and this is a coach and a group of players who barely know each other’s names, let alone their basketball skills and preferences. There were some good things, some not-so-good; the good being greeted with high fives and a moment of hand clapping from the coaching staff.

The bad? Well, let’s listen in to a moment when full-court, 5-on-5 play began, DeVries stopping play to inform the teams clad in white and in blue jerseys “It’s already a pickup game and we’re only a minute and a half into it.”

“When you have a group made up of all new guys, it takes some time to figure each other out – coaches and players,” DeVries began. “Coaches are trying to figure out how to utilize each guy’s individual strengths and put him in the best position to succeed.

“Vice-versa, the players are trying to figure out what you want from them.”

The objective is obvious.

“You have to learn as a group how to win together,” DeVries said. “That’s the part that takes the longest time.”

And while a whole lot of big guys aren’t on DeVries’ side right now, time is. His son and expected high scorer, Tucker DeVries, coming back from rehabbing a shoulder injury a week ago, and Javon Small, a transfer from Oklahoma State who is expected to be a key part of this year’s team, were late joiners in the summer workouts. There’s no reason for DeVries, the coach, to rush into anything.

The team leaves in a couple of weeks on a summer trip to Italy, part vacation, part basketball education, but mostly just a time to build the kind of chemistry necessary to go through the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the joy and tears of a long season.

Right now, the two most important letters to the team are not Xs and Os, but instead creating an I.D – identity.

“We are creating an identity. What do we want that to be every single day and what do we want that to look like every single day?” he said. “I told them, on a day like today with the media here or even if it is just a fan coming by, they should be able to know what our identity is.

“If they can’t, we’re not there yet.”

And what does he want that identity to be? Bob Huggins’s teams were defined by their physicality, John Beilein’s by the 3-point shooting. What is DeVries striving to create as an identity?

“We want them to leave our gym and talk about how hard we play, how much energy and enthusiasm we play with, how connected we are,” he said.

You could almost read his mind – or at least his shirt – as he spoke, for his T-shirt said “WVU ENERGY”.

Precision certainly isn’t there yet. Combinations are in their infancy. Roles are still to be defined.

“You should have seen it on June 8th,” DeVries said of Tuesday’s practice. “Whew. We have made strides. It’s coming. The progress will come. Sometimes, as a coach, you want it today, but that’s not realistic.”

One of the most intriguing aspects of what really is an experiment is that the team leader is the coach’s son, Tucker, a senior who has surpassed 20 points a game in each of the past two seasons while playing for his dad at Drake.

You’d think being a senior and with his resume, this would be a season without the past pressures, but he says that’s not so.

“No matter where I am, I am always trying to prove myself and get better. This year, with it being a new group and it being kind of a new start, we want to prove as a group what we’re about and try to win as many games as possible. I think everyone we have is motivated to do so,” he said.

“We have a lot of seniors. I know this senior group and some of the younger guys and it seems like all the guys in this locker room have something to prove,” Tucker said. “We have a lot to prove here. We have one year left, us seniors, and everybody got a new start, a new beginning and we are doing it together.

“There’s a lot of guys in the locker room who have been the best players on teams that haven’t won as much and guys who haven’t played as much on teams that really won. It’s like trying to prove themselves at this level and come together and put it out there.”

In the mix, too, are a pair of freshmen who may just provide more help than you might expect from young players on a senior-heavy team: Jonathan Powell and KJ Tenner.

“I love the freshmen we brought in,” Tucker DeVries said. “It’s good to have some youth in the locker room, too. As a fourth- and fifth-year senior, you are not as goofy as you were as a freshman. I remember being that guy as a freshman. Having that in the locker room is really neat. KJ brings that smile every day and lights up everyone else.”

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