COLUMN: A look back at WVU sports in 2024

MORGANTOWN If the hiring of Rich Rodriguez to straighten out the West Virginia football situation is the No.

1 story of an intriguing 2024, then surely the hiring of Darian DeVries cannot be far behind and it isnt, as we rank it the No.

3 story of the year.

In most ways, it is fair to say that the basketball situation was more of a mess than the football situation, giving the cloud under which Hall of Fame coach Bob Huggins had been driven from his job and the timing where athletic director Wren Baker was thrust into a search for his replacement.

The timing left the list of candidates short in 2023 so Baker, rather than jump to someone he really wasnt sold on, decided to promote Josh Eilert as a yearlong interim coach while he did a thorough search.

The interim appointment had everything go wrong and produced the most losses in any season in the history of the program but it allowed Baker to settle upon Darian DeVries of Drake as the proper choice to rescue the Mountaineers program and re-establish all the history that came with it, including the legends of Jerry West, Rod Hundley and Ron Thorn.

On March 24, 2024 Baker welcomed DeVries as the 23rd coach in school history.

This was not a big name hire but it was a well thought out one, just as had been his hire the previous year of Mark Kellogg as womens coach.

From 2014-15 to 2016-17 Drake had gone 23-70 before a .500 season of 17-17 under one-year coach Niko Medved and from 1970-71 until DeVries was hired away from Creighton in 2018-19, where he had been an assistant for 17 years, Drake had recorded 20 wins just once.

DeVries came in and turned the program upside down, winning 20 or more games in six consecutive seasons and reached the NCAA Tournaments three times.

He was ready to test himself against Power 4 teams and when Baker looked into him he offered up everything he wanted, even to having a son with one years eligibility left who had averaged more than 20 points a game and was a team leader.

His one interaction with WVU was being an assistant when WVU beat Drake on Tyrone Sallys dunk on a fastbreak on the final play of a 63-61 Mountaineers victory in 2005.

With Mike Gansey of that WVU team who now serves as general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers as one of his backers, DeVries won over Baker on every level.

The only basketball player out of a family of football players, one of whom reached the NFL, DeVries has come in and gotten the Mountaineers off a strong start with a 9-2 record, as many wins as last years team had all season as they head into Big 12 play against Kansas on New Years Eve.

Hes done it by reconstructing the entire roster and has been the surprise team of the Big 12 to date.

No.

4 WVU Cross Country team Sean Cleary, who has coached track and cross country at WVU, finished his 18th season as head coach of the Mountaineers and his coaching career goes back more 30 years a the school, beginning as a graduate assistant.

He had coached a number of great athletes in womens track and cross country but knew this years cross country team, led by All-American Ceili McCabe, a redshirt graduate student and an Olympic 3,000-meter steeplechase star, would be one of his best teams.

But what awaited him proved to be more than he could have expected as the Mountaineers became national NCAA runners-up, beaten out only by Big 12 rival BYU, who won both the NCAA mens and womens crowns.

McCabe was joined by freshman Joy Naukot of Kenya to lift the Mountaineers higher than theyd ever reached before in the sport.

McCabe became the Big 12s womens runner of the year while Naukot was the conferences freshman of the year and figures to carry on in McCabes footsteps moving forward.

McCabes season included a third Big 12 championship in her career, then she added a third NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional title in person and course-record time of 19:02.60 and then she capped the year off by finishing sixth in the Big Big 12 meet to earn her ninth first team All-America honor.

In the NCAA runner up performance, Naukot was the top freshman runner in the nation, finishing 17th.

If I had one word to describe todays performance, I would choose spectacular, Cleary said after the championship.

I am so very proud of this team, and all they have accomplished.

As we watched the team move through this field to finally emerge with a second-place finish, it completes the finest season in program history.

No.

5 Building rosters This has become a never-ending story in college sports today and as the year ends it is in full swing as the system moves away from NIL and trusts to a revenue sharing program that will involve WVU paying out in the neighborhood of $20 million in money to its athletes.

With this new system being introduced and with the transfer portal swallowing up and spitting out athletes almost as fast as coaches can bring them into being, the best thing that may come of it is that program booklet sales will skyrocket as it will really be true that you cant tell the players without a program.

Right now, the WVU football team is undergoing a complete restructuring as Rich Rodriguez starts from scratch.

As Christmas arrived, the only true offensive starter left on the team between graduation and the transfer portal was running back Jahiem White, which is a good place to start.

But with quarterback Garrett Greene and consensus All-American tackle graduating Wyatt Milum graduating and the likes of running back CJ Donaldson Jr., wide receiver Hudson Clement and offensive guard Tomas Rimac transferring, Rodriguez was really back where he started in 2000 when he took over from Don Nehlen.

Not surprising, he said.

I mean, college football has changed so much.

A lot of times, guys go in the portal because they want to see what their value is.

Some guys want to go because they want an opportunity to play more.

And some guys go, and they dont know what the hell they want to do.

I think sometime over the next year or two there will be some sanity put into college athletics.

Rodriguez spoke with them and offered the reasons they should stay, but he was leaving it up to them.

Im not going to beg them Im going to tell them this is what were going to do; were going to be in a great position to help them not just career-wise, football-wise, academically, but financially.

But if they are going to chase the money and some school is going to pay them big, big money, more money that we would pay, and they decide to do that, thats fine.

Ill get another one.

I dont panic about it.

While Nicco Marchiol is not the ideal Rodriguez quarterback, Rich Rod figures to be leaning in that direction unless a more Pat White-like figure transfers in.

And there are no complaints that nearly the entire defense has to be rebuilt.

DeVries was in an even worse situation when he took over as he had only one returning player from last years team staying in basketball, Ofri Naveh, the Israeli import, but he wound up redshirting this year so DeVries wound up putting together a team from scratch.

While building up a 9-2 record heading toward Big 12 play, it turned out that he had chosen wisely as Oklahoma State transfer Javon Small has taken over a star role and is threatening to become the first player in two decades to average 20 points a game, averaging 19.7 at present.

An injury to his son, Tucker DeVries, the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year from last year, has been crippling but he may return.

Meanwhile, with transfers from near and far fit into what he needed nicely and with a pair of freshmen guards Jonathan Powell and KJ Tenner he has cobbled together a competitive team that believes in itself and that could engineer a surprise in the Big 12 right away.

I really like the way it has come together, he said on a podcast in midsummer.

It took us a while to get going as we were putting the staff together and getting our roster started through the portal and things; I think weve got great chemistry.

I think the pieces all fit well together, so I think we will have an opportunity to have a very competitive team, and a team that I know is hungry with a lot of guys that are looking forward to the challenges that they are going to see every night.

NEXT: The Top 10 stories of 2024, Nos.

6-7-8 Follow @bhertzel on X.

This article has been shared from the original article on timeswv, here is the link to the original article.