Nespor: What Are Reasonable Expectations for WVU Basketball This Season?

WVU basketball tips off the 2024-25 season tonight and there is a single question at the front of my mind, what are the expectations for the first year of head coach Darian DeVries?

The easy answer is that the Mountaineers should at least be better than last year. It won’t be hard to do better than the program’s worst season in over 20 years, but the question is how much better should this team be expected to be?

If we look to last year for a benchmark, there were 61 new coaches hired for the 2023-24 season. Of those 61, only four made the NCAA Tournament — mid-majors McNeese, Montana State and Western Kentucky and the Big 12’s own Texas Tech.

Texas Tech’s new hire, Grant McCasland, had a resume similar to DeVries, with a lot of success at mid-major before moving up.

It’s not a perfect one-to-one comparison, however, because McCasland didn’t have quite as much turnover, bringing in six transfers and two freshmen compared to DeVries’s 10 and four.

It’s that turnover that makes it hard to get a pulse on this team. New players were brought in by new coaches who are trying to run a new system. Like any jigsaw puzzle, it’s very difficult to see how all the individual pieces are going to fit together.

The Mountaineers looked good in their exhibition win over Charleston, but that’s not enough to try and predict the rest of the season.

Nonconference play is going to be where this team shows its true colors. WVU was miserable in that regard last year, losing a pair of buy-games at home and finishing 5-8 in nonconference play.

In his press conference on Friday, DeVries talked about how seriously he’s taking nonconference play.

“I think every game is dangerous,” he said. “I approach every one pretty much the same. I don’t ever take winning and losing for granted. You’ve got to pour everything into every game to put yourself in the best position to go win it. We’ll treat this game like it’s the national championship.”

Improvement in nonconference plays could see the Mountaineers sitting with eight or nine wins by the time they take on Kansas on New Year’s Eve. A game at Pitt and a brutal Battle 4 Atlantis bracket won’t help that cause, however.

Then the buzzsaw that is the 20-game Big 12 schedule begins. Big 12 teams fall into three distinct tiers this season, the contenders (Kansas, Houston, Iowa State, Baylor and Arizona), the tournament teams (Cincinnati, Texas Tech, Kansas State and BYU) and then everybody else.

WVU is firmly a part of the ‘everyone else’ tier right now. The Mountaineers play six games against the contenders and it will be very difficult to win any of them, although last year’s squad did steal a win from Kansas.

West Virginia also plays six games against the tournament teams and eight games against everyone else. On the surface, it looks like it’ll be an uphill battle to go 10-10 in conference play.

Looking at everything, we’re approaching 15 or 16 wins. That would put the team right around a .500 winning percentage, which I think ends up being a fair spot to place expectations for year one under DeVries.

Josh Whitt on his podcast ‘Unreasonable Doubt’ set his optimistic win total at 17 and I think I’m right there with him. 17 wins would be a good season for WVU. A few fewer and no one’s going to be upset, a few more and maybe the Mountaineers end up being a bubble team.

The only way to know is to play the games, and, thankfully, that starts Monday night. 

For a related story, WVU basketball wants its offense to be as flexible as possible this season.