What Darian DeVries Said Following the Loss to Kansas State

The No. 23 West Virginia Mountaineers (13-6, 4-4) fell to the Kansas State Wildcats (8-11, 2-6) Saturday evening 73-60.

West Virginia head coach Darian DeVries sat courtside with WVU play-by-play caller Tony Caridi and commentator Brad Howe and discussed the Mountaineers first half struggles, and falling short on both ends of the floor.

West Virginia trailing 42-18 at halftime.

We didn’t bring the tenacity. To be honest with you, I thought we had a great couple of days of practice – incredibly focused after the loss. And we came out and looked flat those first five minutes, and then never really recovered.

I thought the last 20 minutes we really competed and played the way that we need to play if we’re going to be successful and certainly proud of the guys for that but trying to dig your way out of a 24-point hole at the half, that tough.

Certainly gave ourselves some opportunities to maybe make it interesting a couple of times but ultimately it was too big of a hole.

Second half adjustments

At halftime, we got (senior guard) (Javon Small) off the ball a little bit more to get it back to him - I thought that was better to us. I thought our movement and cutting was better. I thought guys just played harder on both ends, defensively and offensively, just had a lot more purpose to us. When we do that, that’s the results you can have.

Like I told them at halftime, you can’t put yourselves in these types of holes and come out of games. The Arizona State game was the same way, you start the game down 10-2. It’s always hard to keep crawling back. So, we got to get off to a faster start.

Like I told them, It’s a good league. People have a bad game or two, you can’t let it turn into three, four and five. So, we’re going to get on the plane, we’re going to get back home and we’re going to get ready for a huge home game against Houston on Wednesday.

Shooting 4-21 from three-point range against K-State, 8-50 the last two games

We don’t have a true low post presence and not a lot of one on one, break you down type of guys, so we need to rely on movement and cutting to kind of get those opportunities. And then when we got those feet set in those catch and shoot situations, we got to knock some down. And the big games we won and the last couple of games, we haven’t shot it as well.

But again, it still goes back to our first half defense. Whether we’re making shots or not, I don’t care, that’s just a part of it. Our first half defense, we have to be better. We’re going to win when we play a full 40 minutes of West Virginia basketball, and that’s being tough, physical and disciplined on what we’re doing.