Time for WVU basketball to turn the flickering into a flame again

As a former sports writer and current WVU basketball fan, it hurt watching the Mountaineers lose at home to a BYU team with the exact same record.
The hope for Darian DeVries’ team, of course, is to make the NCAA tournament. It would be quite an achievement after the coach took over a messy situation. Yet after crazy good wins early in the season – against Gonzaga, Arizona, Iowa State, at Kansas — the Mountaineers have lost six of their last nine games with four away games and three home games remaining.
The sky isn’t falling, but there’s certainly precipitation. WVU fell in the important NET rankings to 43 from 39 after the BYU loss. Bracketologist Joe Lunardi has them as a 9 seed, close to “bubble” status.
I think we can agree it’s time for DeVries to light a fire under his team. Time to regain that discipline with a trip to Baylor on deck Saturday.
“The biggest thing was we just lost a lot of our discipline keeping the ball in front of us, and they were playing downhill the whole second half,” DeVries said Tuesday night.
That wasn’t the case earlier in the season. We saw fight AND discipline.
Even after the BYU loss, WVU is No. 18 nationally in scoring defense, allowing 64 points a game. But the Mountaineers were leaky inside against the Cougars.
Again, time to light a fire. No one is talking about DeVries as national coach of the year now. No one is touting Javon Small as an All-American now that he’s dipped to No. 58 nationally in scoring (although an 18.5-point average is still pretty daggone good).
And a glance at the other numbers might make one wince: No. 291 of 355 teams nationally in scoring offense (69.4); No. 264 in field goal percentage (43.13); No. 318 in rebounding margin (-3); No. 158 in fast break points (10.42).
As a Mountaineer follower, I didn’t expect much out of this team. I certainly didn’t expect those big early season wins. But after those wins, I so want a rally for DeVries and the team members. I want those wins to lead to something nice.
I remember in 2002 when then-new WVU coach John Beilein led the Mountaineers to a stunning victory over Florida when the program was likewise coming off an implosion. It was a spark. But it flickered and went out within a brutal Big East en route to a 14-15 record.
Beilein, of course, built the program up afterward and had much success at WVU. That’s the hope now with DeVries.
But it’s much more difficult in these times of NIL, paying players and the transfer portal. Each season – in all sports – is like an Etch A Sketch. Most everything is wiped clean and coaches start anew.
That’s why I’m so rooting for this WVU team to rally, to light that fire. To this point, they’ve earned a spot in the NCAA tournament. But the Mountaineers can’t lose at home. They can’t lose to teams with less talent. They need to win now.
Because if recent trends nationwide hold true, next season’s roster will probably be completely different.
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Mitch Vingle covered sports in West Virginia for 38 years. Follow Mitch on Twitter at @MitchVingle and be sure to check out the rest of Wheelhouse Creative’s website for your marketing and advertising needs. If interested, call us at 304-905-6005.