Can WVU Secure Its 4th Win Over a Top 10 Team? A Few Tweaks Could Allow That to Happen

West Virginia is looking for its fourth win over a top-10 team this season.
Jan 21, 2025; Morgantown, West Virginia, USA; West Virginia Mountaineers guard Joseph Yesufu (1) talks with West Virginia Mountaineers head coach Darian DeVries during the first half against the Arizona State Sun Devils at WVU Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Ben Queen-Imagn Images
Jan 21, 2025; Morgantown, West Virginia, USA; West Virginia Mountaineers guard Joseph Yesufu (1) talks with West Virginia Mountaineers head coach Darian DeVries during the first half against the Arizona State Sun Devils at WVU Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Ben Queen-Imagn Images / Ben Queen-Imagn Images

In about 24 hours, the West Virginia Mountaineers will have a chance to put an incredibly tough week of results behind them and add another top-10 win to their already impressive resume of ranked wins when they welcome the No. 6 team in the country, the Houston Cougars, to the WVU Coliseum.

Two weeks ago, when these two met, WVU really struggled to defend the three ball and also gave the Cougars way too many easy baskets in transition. That's what Houston does exceptionally well - create turnovers and make you pay. The Mountaineers only turned it over 12 times, which actually isn't that high of a number, especially against an elite defensive team, but just about every turnover turned into points. As a matter of fact, the Cougs scored 25 points of the variety.

As far as the three-ball is concerned, they made the mistake of going under screens on numerous occasions, and every time they went under, they knocked down a triple. Since that game, WVU has been much better about fighting over top of the screen and bumping the ball-handler off the three-point line in those scenarios.

DeVries knows that a lot of things will need to go his team's way in order to pull off the upset on Wednesday night, but it starts with those two areas.

West Virginia University head coach Darian DeVries
West Virginia University head coach Darian DeVries / Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

"The thing about our game with them last time was, there are some things you got to choose. Roberts is posting and you try to play him one on one like we did early and he goes eight for ten in the first half. I think we came and double him twice and they hit threes on both possessions. They put you in tough spots there but where you really get in trouble is live ball turnovers, offensive rebounds, kickouts, and that’s where they’re elite at it, so you have to minimize that. And then in our game with them last time, we made five or six mistakes of going under a ball screen and they made us pay on every single one of them, and they can do that to you. So, minimizing those types of mistakes but minimizing mistakes on the offensive end where you’re not giving them turnovers and they’re getting transition threes because they got three or four of those in that game as well. That’s a strength of theirs that you have to try and take away."

Then, there's, of course, shooting the deep ball more efficiently. In the last two games combined, the Mountaineers are...wait for it...8-for-50 from three-point range. That's a whopping 16%, folks. You're not going to win many games shooting the ball that much from deep and seeing it go in at that low of a clip.

"Some of it is shot selection, and then other parts we’re just missing," DeVries said. "We’ve told our guys, JP, Amani, some of those looks are great looks that we’re just going to keep shooting and knock them down. So, from a confidence standpoint, we got to continue to take those and hopefully make them at a higher rate. We just had a bad week of shooting, for sure."

While WVU has had success taking down opponents with a number next to its name this season, expecting a win is a tall ask, albeit not impossible. Every time it seems like this group is about to go into a major downswing, they continue to fight, scrap, and claw their way to victory, even if it arrives in an ugly manner.

Seeing the Mountaineers take down Houston wouldn't be the most surprising result that could happen, and neither would a hard-fought loss. It would be watching this team come out flat for a third straight game and showing very little fight.

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Schuyler Callihan
SCHUYLER CALLIHAN

Publisher of Mountaineers Now on FanNation/Sports Illustrated. Lead recruiting expert and co-host of Between the Eers, Walk Thru GameDay Show, Mountaineers Now Postgame Show, and In the Gun Podcast.