What Darian DeVries Said Following the Loss to No. 6 Houston

West Virginia University head coach Darian DeVries gives his initial thoughts on the sixth-ranked Cougar
West Virginia University head coach Darian DeVries
West Virginia University head coach Darian DeVries / Christopher Hall - West Virginia on S

The West Virginia Mountaineers (13-7, 4-5) dropped its third-straight game after falling to the No. 6 Houston Cougars (17-3, 9-0) Wednesday night 63-49.

West Virginia head coach Darian DeVries met with the media following the game and provided his assessment of the loss.

Starting off slow for the third straight game before bouncing back in the second half

Like I told the team, I don’t quite understand why we’ve gotten off to slow starts here recently. The reason we got back into the game because I felt like our guys played defensively at a level that they’re capable of and for us when we’re good, its our defense. We talked about shooting and all that stuff and just doesn’t matter. It’s all about when we guard that’s where our group has a chance to be special and can do some really good things against good teams and I thought that second half you saw that back again and that was great to see from a coaching standpoint. You have a tough half, a really tough half, against a team like Houston – down 20 that’s not always the most encouraging thing to go into a halftime locker room as a task to try to comeback but I thought the guys showed incredible fight in the second half and got back to what made them successful throughout the year.

The Houston defense holding the Mountaineers to 8-22 from the floor in the first half

Defensively, I mean they’re just well-connected. They’re very aggressive. They actually, tonight, were less aggressive in trapping ball screens because they wanted to switch a little bit more to take away some of our pick and pops that (sophomore forward) Amani (Hansberry) had hurt them at their place with, but they do a great job, and they really load to the ball. It’s hard to really crack them and not many teams have. I thought at times tonight we did get some good looks and opportunities, especially in the second half. I thought our movement was a lot better. We were able to get some post touches and things and lived in the paint a little bit more, which is a lot of times hard to do against them. Second half, I thought offensively we did enough, even defensively until late. We just ran out of gas. I thought we did enough. It was just that first half was too much.

Enduring a three-game losing streak

The first half felt like our last two games to be honest with you. We just haven’t played with the same spirit that we had prior to that. I thought the second half, if we get back to that and do it for a full 40 minutes, we’re going to be right there where we need to be to win games down the stretch. And like I’ve told the guys it’s a long season. It tough, it’s a grind, and we still got 11 games left, so there are lots of opportunities out there to go win games. They’ve put themselves in a good position to survive a stretch like this where you go through a three-game losing streak, but at some point, you’ve got to put the brakes on, and we’ve got to get back on the other side of that column. Every night there’s an opportunity going forward where it’s a quad one or quad two type of game, and we’ve got to win our share of those.


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Christopher Hall
CHRISTOPHER HALL

Member of the Football Writers Association of America, U.S. Basketball Writers Association and National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association.