By james art 
A long offseason is coming to an end and West Virginia is excited to get the season started.
The Mountaineers will open the 2024-25 campaign against Robert Morris, Friday’s kickoff for the basketball team entering game prep mode with their scout.
“Then it stays that way until March. But our guys are excited to get out there and play,” head coach Darian DeVries said.
The head coach tries to keep his team in a routine when it comes to preparing for games with the same film work, same approach and review to maintain consistency throughout the year.
West Virginia has a good idea of what the rotation will look like to open the year, with the head coach suggesting it will be between 8-10 players, although that is never set in stone. With injuries and other opportunities that can arise, DeVries keeps his players focused on the fact that they can be there.
“You just play well in practice and keep getting in the best position possible,” he said.
One player who won’t be a part of that rotation to start the season is guard Jaden Stone, who will be out for a period of time with an upper-body injury. Stone was injured in practice and will be day-to-day as he progresses through the course of the non-conference schedule.
On the offensive end of the field, expect West Virginia to try to take advantage of what the defense will give them depending on the matchup. The Mountaineers won’t look to do one particular thing and will need to be flexible and show the ability to pivot depending on what the opposition is doing.
The offense will operate the same way from game to game, but the way they attack can vary depending on each opponent on the schedule. The plan is to make sure guys aren’t robotic, but instead trust their instincts to be more efficient and quicker on that end of the floor.
“I don’t think you want to be persistent about it, I think, as an insult. We want to be as flexible as possible,” DeVries said.
The playbook is pretty extensive, but the focus will be to go into each game with about 10-15 types of plays that they think will work against each opponent for a practice replay. That will be the main focus, but during a game the coaching staff may decide to bring something else out depending on what’s going on.
“I think they play very unselfishly and together. So, I’m excited to see when we go into games now, just being able to do that for 40 minutes every night is our challenge,” DeVries said.
West Virginia won’t be experimenting much in the early part of the schedule and will instead focus on what it needs to do to win every ball game. This offseason featured a total of 12 new scholarship players thrown into the mix, so there was a lot of time spent installing both offensively and defensively on the field compared to some of his Drake teams that returned a lot .
Overall, DeVries likes how his team plays unselfishly together, and now he’s excited to see how that translates into game settings. Every team will have moments when they struggle, but the focus will be on how they respond in those situations, starting with the opener.
“I’m excited right now. I can’t wait to go play and get our guys in front of everyone and compete,” he said.