What Darian DeVries Said Following the Win Over Cincinnati

The West Virginia Mountaineers (16-10, 7-8) handled the Cincinnati Bearcats (15-11, 5-10) Wednesday night, 62-59.

The final 10 seconds of the game

The ball was in the air and I was like, ‘that’s going in.’ It really felt like we put the game away, but like we told them in the locker room, that’s why you never take for granted until that clock hits zero because there’s so many things that can happen. That was one of the wilder sequences I’ve ever been a part of. I’m just thankful that ball didn’t go in.

Freshman guard Jonathan Powell hitting both of his threes within a three minute span in the final six minutes

What I loved about it, and we tell him all the time too is just keep shooting because he was 0-5 for at the time, to have the courage to still say, ‘I got the confidence to still shoot this sixth one,’ when it was a huge shot and then he hit another after that. We needed it at a critical time there and what a big shot by him for a freshman to step up and have the confidence to still do that on a tough shooting night, I thought it said a lot.

Putting together a 17-3 run down the final stretch of the second half

I think they had a one and one – a front end of a one and one and maybe a two shot foul they missed – a couple of back to back there, so that was certainly helpful in that moment because were treading water at best at that point. After that, I thought those last eight minutes of the game, JP hitting a shot, Amani had some huge offense rebounds for us and a couple of threes as well and that got our offense going, and then, defensively, I thought to close out the game I thought we were pretty good except those last couple seconds.