What Darian DeVries Said Following the Win Over Robert Morris

West Virginia University head coach Darian DeVries recaps the win against the Colonials

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

The West Virginia Mountaineers opened 2024-25 season with an 87-59 win versus the Robert Morris Colonials Monday night.

21-0 run to start the game

I thought our start was about as good as we could have scripted it. I thought we came out -we were super aggressive defensively. We able to create some turnovers, got some opportunities there and then I thought offensively, we were really sharp and were able to get clean looks by different guys. So, for us, that eight, ten minutes, I thought was the way we want it to look, and now it's that extra 30 minutes is what we got to clean up a little bit. But I thought it was a great start. I thought the guys had tremendous focus and did a really nice job.

Giving up 16 offensive rebounds.

It's not great. I told the team, you hold the team to 32% in both halves, that's really good defensively. It's just you can't give 16 extra opportunities on a given night and expect to be successful at that end of the floor. So, we'll talk about it all year. It's an area that's all we've worked on from June until now. We're going to continue to work on it and if we can limit teams to one shot, like I told the guys, it's just a mindset. We got to do a better job of hitting bodies and when we're giving up those rebounds, most of it is just a lack of executing boxouts, and that's the things that those habits got to continue to get better.

Building on the win

We we've all been there before, and you got a big lead and things, but for us, it's, how do you capture, you know, those moments where I thought we were really good and continue to maintain that for a longer period of time and that's the that's the part that we got to continue to think about and talk about in the huddles and maintaining that high level of urgency is what we're looking for the most. So again, it's first game in a early opener, like this, I liked our guys and their mindset that we came out with. We'll take that start every night if we can.