MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Wren Baker has his man. Darian DeVries, who led Drake University to nearly half of its NCAA Tournament appearances in school history, was formally introduced as West Virginia University’s 23rd men’s basketball coach Thursday morning inside the WVU Coliseum.
DeVries, sporting a blue suit, white shirt and gold tie, was one of several outstanding up-and-coming coaches in line for available power conference jobs at West Virginia, Ohio State, Michigan, Washington, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Louisville and Oklahoma State.
The West Virginia position really came open last June when Baker appointed Josh Eilert as interim coach, meaning he had more time than others to target his guy.
“I think you are looking for a variety boxes that you’re trying to check, but I do think when you talk about the depth and the quality of the Big 12, there are some great, great coaches in this league,” Baker said.
“I’ve got great respect for the Missouri Valley Conference. It’s a great league, and you can go back in time and see the success this conference has had in the past, and I have a lot of respect for the job that coach did at Drake,” he added. “I know what that job was there before he took it over. It was not a very good job, and he’s turned it into a good job. In my mind, that’s what made him the best candidate, and we looked at a lot of different people and a lot of different profiles.”
Baker said the on-campus search committee consisted of outgoing executive deputy athletics director Steve Uryasz, who will be taking over as athletic director at Tarleton State next week, Natasha Oakes, deputy athletics director and senior woman administrator, Ben Murray, deputy athletics director and chief development officer, Michael Fragale, executive senior associate athletics director, and Bryan Messerly, associate athletics director for communications.
“I spent 20 years at Creighton University because that was the place that I loved, it was a place that my family loved, and I wasn’t going to leave Creighton University for just any job at the time,” DeVries said. “I wanted the right one to get my first job, and that was Drake University.
“I’m from the Midwest, and I said it was going to take something pretty special to leave there, and when I talked to Wren, and talked to people who know this program, this place and the people here, everything about it made sense to me and my family, that this was a place that we could see ourselves here for a very, very long time,” he said.
DeVries’ wife, Ashley, son, Tucker, and daughter, Tatum, were in attendance for today’s event. Tucker, a 6-foot-7, 210-pound guard and two-time MVC player of the year who averaged 21.6 points per game for Drake and is considered among the top players in this year’s transfer portal, will be playing his senior year for the Mountaineers, his father announced today.
In his six seasons at Drake, DeVries experienced success that had eluded others since the late 1960s when Maury John took the Bulldogs to their only Final Four in 1969, losing to powerhouse UCLA in the semifinals.
After John left for Iowa State in 1971, the Bulldogs experienced 32 losing seasons over the next 47 years, including a 2-26 campaign in 1997, a 3-24 year in 1998 and a pair of seven-win seasons in 2016-17 just prior to DeVries’ arrival in 2018-19.
In his first season, he got Drake to 24 victories and a trip to the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT) – the Bulldogs’ best record since Keno Davis led them to 28 wins and a 2008 first-round NCAA tournament loss to Western Kentucky. Two years later, DeVries had them dancing with a victory over Wichita State in the tournament’s opening round and back again for NCAA appearances in 2023 and 2024.
This past year, the Bulldogs won 28 games and were seeded 10th in the NCAA tournament where they lost 66-61 to Washington State.
His six-year record at Drake was 150-55, including an impressive 78-33 mark in MVC play.
DeVries’ basketball lineage began as a player for Eldon Miller at Northern Iowa. Miller is a familiar name to old-school Mountaineer fans who recall his Ohio State teams in the early 1980s.
He also worked 17 years as an assistant at Creighton under coaches Dana Altman and Greg McDermott, where the Bluejays made 19 postseason appearances and 12 NCAA Tournament trips.
One of those came in 2005 under Altman when West Virginia defeated Creighton 63-61 on Tyrone Sally’s fastbreak dunk on the game’s final play. That game was played at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Mike Gansey, now general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers, played in that contest and contributed 13 points for John Beilein’s Mountaineers.
DeVries was asked about it this morning.
“It’s funny. We joke about it, and I told (Gansey) there is a 20-year statute of limitations, and we haven’t quite gotten there yet, so I haven’t forgiven him yet about that loss,” he said. “I hang on to losses a little bit longer than most people, but we’re getting closer.”
He was also asked about being the only basketball player in a family full of football players. Younger brother Jared was an All-American defensive end at Iowa who played in the NFL from 1999-2010 with the Detroit Lions. Another younger brother, Dusty, also played at Iowa while his youngest brother, Jay, played football at Wartburg College.
“They beat me to the mashed potatoes and the gravy, and I got left with the scraps,” he joked. “I was like 140 pounds coming out of high school, so this was a better path for me.”
DeVries said the coming days will be spent assembling a coaching staff, tending to the current roster, exploring what’s available in the transfer portal and high school recruiting.
“There is an unbelievable tradition here, a great history, and a lot to sell, the fan base and their passion,” DeVries said. “There is so much to sell about this program that sells itself, so when you go out in the short few days here, it’s already been an easy sell. Kids are interested, and they want to be a part of it.”
West Virginia is coming off a 23-loss season – the most defeats in school history. The Mountaineers were winless on the road and allowed more than 90 points in six of their final 10 games.
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