What Darian DeVries Following the Win Over Georgetown

The West Virginia Mountaineers (6-2) defeated the Georgetown Hoyas (7-2) in the Big 12-Big East Challenge Friday night 73-60.

Head coach Darian DeVries met with the media following the game and gave his thoughts on the Mountaineers seventh win of the season.

Atmosphere inside the WVU Coliseum

I thought the crowd was tremendous. This was kind of our first chance as a staff and as a team kind of feel what the Coliseum is like when its pretty full, and I thought the crowd had a tremendous impact on the game because we were a half a step slow for a good portion of the night. But I thought their energy provided us some energy and then we were able to come out of it. And then, once we did that, then we were able to sustain it for the rest of that second half.

When you have a home court advantage like that with that type of noise you could tell it impacted their offense and their ability to execute and call plays. They had to break down into one-on-one stuff because they couldn’t call out what they wanted to run which helped our defense.

The Mountaineers’ 16-0 second half run

I really thought (senior forward) Eduardo (Andre) kind of ignited some of that for us – blocked a couple of shots which led to us getting out in transition. We were able to get a couple of open looks that we weren’t getting on some of the halfcourt stuff and then I thought it freed us up a little bit and found our rhythm, found our energy a little bit more.

West Virginia’s first half offensive struggles

They kept us off balance and we hadn’t seen that this year. We never found a good flow. They were going from man to zone, and we just weren’t very good at attacking it they way we would have liked. I thought the second half we were much more aggressive with some of our stuff, and our movement got better in the second half. The first half was a little bit too much one pass and a shot - I thought we just got a little anxious, and part of that might have been a little excited with the crowd too. We were just a little anxious to do it a little early in possessions.

West Virginia outrebounding Georgetown in the second half 18-14

I thought the second half, we just played harder. We got tougher, we got more physical, played with more energy, more enthusiasm. I told the team after the game, ‘that first half team, that team is not going to win a lot of games. We have to play a certain way for us to be good. The way we played in the second half, I’ll take that team anywhere, but you have to be able to do that every single night and that’s every single possession because you don’t always get to go on a 16-0 run to pull you out of it. So, that’s where we’re still growing as a team is learning how to do that every single day whether it be practice or games.