What Darian DeVries Said Following the Loss to Baylor

The West Virginia Mountaineers (15-10, 6-8) fell to the Baylor Bears (16-9, 8-6) in overtime Saturday 74-71.

West Virginia head coach Darian DeVries sat courtside with WVU play-by-play caller Tony Caridi and commentator Brad Howe to give his thoughts on heartbreaking loss to Baylor.

Opening Statement

I told the team, sometimes there’s games you don’t play as hard as you like and you end up losing and those are certainly disappointing, this was not one of those by any means. Our guys really competed – they played their tails off.

Put us in a position to win the game and had a couple of opportunities there, had some great looks at critical times and unfortunately we just had one of those nights where we didn’t make them, that’s basketball.

Overall, I told the guys I was incredibly proud of their fight. In a hostile environment, a really talented to team, to come in here and continue to stay together and I told them, I loved the way we played in the second half. We were moving it and sharing it and guarding our tails off. I thought we really dug in defensively. Did some good things. Made life hard for them, even though they shot it better in the second half, there was some possessions where we guarded as about as good as we could they just made a late clock or made a tough play at times.

We got to figure out how to do a better job of keeping people off the free throw line. When you give a team 27 points and they shoot 32 free throws its hard to win.

Holding Baylor to 38.9% from the field

You’d feel really good about that. Again, I love their fight, we just got to do a better job of keeping people off the line.

WVU offense outperforming Baylor

We had some great looks by really good shooter. We had a really tough play. We were going to go up two with about two and a half minutes left and someone had fallen on the possession before, Toby’s going to go up for the dunk and its soaking wet. Its not Toby’s fault at all, it’s just extremely bad luck at a critical time, and that’s going to put us up two with two and a half to go.

What I love, they didn’t give into it all. The didn’t give into, ‘They’re shooting all these free throws, we’re not. They didn’t give into it. They kept fighting, they kept persevering, and we had a chance to win the game. There was opportunities there, again, just a little short.

I told them, there’s nothing that is in front of us we still can’t accomplish. It was a tough loss. Its one you would love to have because these road games are like gold. Now, we got to go back home, and we got to play a tough Cincinnati team, who’s really found themselves the last couple of games.

Opening Statement

Holding Baylor to 38.9% from the field

WVU offense outperforming Baylor

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