No. 21 WVU looks a lot different since first meeting against Arizona

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Jan. 6—MORGANTOWN — It would seem so much has changed since WVU last met Arizona just 40 days ago in The Bahamas.

“The biggest thing is we’ll go from 80 degrees to 20 degrees, ” joked WVU men’s basketball coach Darian DeVries. “That’s a big adjustment.”

Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday inside the Coliseum.

WVU STATS The changes go further than the temperature.

For starters, it was Arizona (8-5, 2-0 Big 12) facing high expectation in November with a national ranking.

The Mountaineers (11-2, 2-0) now have that cross to bear, moving up to No. 21 in the AP poll this week on the strength of a 3-0 record against ranked teams this season, including that 83-76 overtime win against the Wildcats on Nov. 29.

It’s the first time WVU has been ranked in the AP poll since Dec. 26, 2022, a stay that lasted just one week.

Can DeVries find a way to make this stay a little longer ?

It would be hard to bet against him at this point, with the Mountaineers riding high after a historic road win against then-No. 7 Kansas and following that up with a 19-point victory against Oklahoma State, in which the Cowboys were held to just 33.3 % shooting.

“It started off kind of slow, but our defense kind of turned our offense up, ” DeVries said after the Oklahoma State game. “We started to get some transition threes and some lay-ups.”

The biggest difference will be in the starting lineup for the Mountaineers, which had guard Tucker DeVries for the first meeting in The Bahamas. He connected on eight 3-pointers in that meeting and finished with 26 points.

DeVries has since been battling an upper-body injury and has missed the last five games and likely won’t play against Arizona this time.

“We’re a little bit different with our personnel, ” Darian DeVries said. “We’ll take what we can from that first game and apply it to what we’re doing now and what they’re doing now.”

What Arizona is doing now is battling back from a disappointing start to the season. The Wildcats have won four in a row, including their…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/no-21-wvu-looks-lot-033200569.html

Author : The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.

Publish date : 2025-01-07 03:32:00

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