What Darian DeVries Said Following the Win Over NC Central

West Virginia University head coach Darian DeVries gives his thoughts on the Mountaineers win against the Eagles.

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

The West Virginia Mountaineers (7-2) handled the North Carolina Central Eagles (4-8) Tuesday night 79-45.

Head coach Darian DeVries met with the media following the game and gave an assessment of the Mountaineers’ win against the Eagles.

Tucker DeVries injury status

We’ll just continue to rely on the medical team to tell us what needs to happen there.

Adapting to the absence of Tucker

I thought our team, in a game that was going to be hard and choppy anyway with all the changing defenses and things, I thought the team did a nice job of figuring things out. We had a lot of lineups out there where guys had never played certain positions before. So, when you’re trying to execute things, you’re pretty limited on what you could do. We had to rely on just spacing and moving and cutting and passing and those are the things we’ll continue to work on as we move forward.

Center Eduardo Andre replacing Tucker in the starting five

If we can settle into a starting lineup, we will. We weren’t sure this was the right team to try and go big with the four and five because of the pressing that they do, and then also, they’re playing four perimeter guards all the time. It was kind of a tough matchup, but we wanted to see it early and try it out, but as we got in to the game, our best lineup was to match them with perimeter.

Freshman guard Jonathan Powell bouncing back

We told him to keep shooting. He’s a good shooter. I don’t worry about that. Guys – they just need to stay confident and young guys get a little worried about it, but I certainly didn’t. He someone that puts a large amount of time into his shooting. He’s really a good shooter, great shooter, and tell him to keep shooting. Theres going to be nights where’s hes going to have an eight for 11.