WVU’s men’s basketball program has a surprising omission | News, Sports, Jobs

OTHER SCHEDULE – WVU will not have a home game against Kansas in the league during Darian DeVries’ first season leading the Mountaineers. – BlueGoldNews.com

MORGANTOWN — While we’ve grown accustomed to the changes brought about by the Big 12’s evolution into what has become a new era of college athletics, Wednesday’s announcement of the first conference basketball schedule under new coach Darian DeVries still came as a shock.

While the departure of Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12 had both historical and financial implications for the conference, at WVU it was merely a sign of the times.

But the reality of the new schedule for what is now a 16-team league that stretches from the Rocky Mountains and the Arizona desert to Appalachia and the heart of Florida is driven home with the realization that Kansas will not be making its annual visit to the United States Coliseum.

Kansas was of course the benchmark for all Big 12 teams and the trip to Morgantown was seen as a highlight each year to achieve Backyard Brawl status, especially since WVU and its electric home atmosphere had tested the Jayhawks in the past.

The Mountaineers have played 28 games against Kansas since joining the Big 12 and are a rather dismal 7-21 in head-to-head meetings.

But their visits to the Coliseum have brought out the best in both the team and the WVU faithful, as the Mountaineers compiled a 7-5 record at home that started with an astonishing 61-56 in 2013 when the Jayhawks came to town came with a No. 2 national ranking.

It was a jubilant crowd that left the stands and entered the field that day. They set the tone for the series that not only made the game a must-see in West Virginia, but also made the networks eager to watch it.

For WVU, it was almost always a box office success: The 10 games were played without COVID or a major winter storm and drew an average of 13,360 fans.

The COVID-19 game drew an estimated 1,500 spectators, while the classic played on Feb. 16, 2015, in the middle of a winter storm that dropped up to 18 inches of snow in parts of West Virginia, drew just 7,083 brave fans.

That was a shame, because it meant they missed perhaps the best basketball game of the series, with No. 23 WVU surprising No. 8 Kansas 62-61. With four seconds left, guard Juwan Staten made a layup to give WVU the lead.

They still had to survive a last-second shot from Perry Ellis that came out of the basket at the buzzer.

The new 16-team Big 12 scheduling format will see men’s teams play five opponents home and away; five on the road only and five at home only, jumping each team from 18 to 20 league games.

Previously, the Big 12 had a 10-team conference and prided itself on playing every opponent home and away. With that, they had a true regular season champion.

This has taken away some freedom in scheduling outside of conferences for each team.

“Now that you have a 20-game schedule, you don’t have a lot of flexibility to do a lot of creative things,” DeVries said. “You have to or want to play a certain number of games to get your home games.

“You want to challenge yourself whether it’s a home, away or neutral game and then find a good (Thanksgiving tournament) to compete in.”

One of WVU’s games is the Pitt Backyard Brawl series, a series that will continue with alternating home games through the 2027-28 season and is expected to be extended.

Then there’s the Big East-Big 12 Challenge game, with WVU playing Georgetown at home on Dec. 6. That series of conference challenges ends this year but is expected to be extended. If not, the Big 12 will almost certainly strike a deal with another Power Four conference.

Then there’s that Thanksgiving tournament. WVU is competing in Battle 4 Atlantis, which will be played in the Bahamas. The field includes Arizona, giving the Mountaineers an early look at a team that’s always a national contender and new to the Big 12, and Oklahoma.

There is also the possibility of playing Gonzaga or Indiana in that tournament, which will give DeVries a good idea early on of the position of the team he has put together.

“It was like, welcome to Morgantown, here’s your tournament,” DeVries said. “I think overall it’s a pretty good schedule. You’ve got a nice balance of home games, a challenging road game with Pitt and a good tournament that we put in.”

After a 9-23 season last year under interim coach Josh Eilert, the entire state is also curious to see where the team stands, hoping they might even turn their post-win chant of “Country Roads” into a concert followed by “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

WVU vs. the new Big 12 all-time: Arizona 2-3, Arizona State 0-0, Baylor 8-17, BYU 1-2, Cincinnati 11-12, Colorado 0-0, Houston 0-1, Iowa State 14-10, Kansas 7-21, Kansas State 16-12, Oklahoma State 12-13, TCU 18-7, Texas Tech 18-10, UCF 2-1, Utah 0-6.

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