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WVU Basketball Looks to Avoid Letdown at Colorado

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There is no history between WVU basketball and Colorado as Sunday will be the first-ever meeting between the Mountaineers (11-3, 2-1 Big 12) and the Buffaloes (9-5, 0-3), in their first season back in the Big 12.

That doesn’t mean there’s no familiarity between the teams, however, as the two head coaches, Darian DeVries for WVU and Tad Boyle for Colorado, have some experience facing one another.

“He’s a terrific coach,” DeVries said Friday. “We used to have some good battles when he was at Wichita State as an assistant coach and I was at Creighton. I’ve known him a long time and he does a really good job.”

DeVries and the No. 21 Mountaineers will be looking to avoid a letdown as they travel out west for the first game of their two-game road trip. The team is looking to rebound from its loss to Arizona on Tuesday before its next two games against No. 12 Houston and No. 3 Iowa State.

“The guys have been great, they have responded well to the couple of losses we’ve had this year,” DeVries said. “They’re a pretty focused group, they understand we didn’t necessarily have our A-game the other night and they’ve focused hard on what went wrong.”

Colorado is still searching for its first Big 12 win of the season and is coming off a gut-wrenching loss to UCF on Wednesday. The Buffaloes led by 10 midway through the second half, but allowed UCF to come back and win the game on a go-ahead free throw in the final minute.

“They were in control for a good portion of that game and built up a double-digit lead fairly late in the game,” DeVries said. “I’m sure they were disappointed they weren’t able to hold on to that late.”

Leading scorer Julian Hammond III scored a career-high 26 points in the loss. He’s averaging 13.6 points per game while shooting 41.3% from three.

“He was really good. If you give him some space, he has the ability to hurt you at a lot of levels,” DeVries said of the senior guard.

WVU basketball and Colorado tip-off in Boulder at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday. The game will be broadcast on ESPN+.

For a related story, latest tournament projection has WVU basketball up against familiar regional foe.

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