New Indiana Head Coach Darian DeVries has Pat McAfee and the rest of the sports media world buzzing after opting to leave West Virginia after one season. The West Virginia fans are angry, and coach Darian DeVries has become public enemy number one in the state.
Darian DeVries Backlash After Indiana Hire
Before this year at West Virginia, DeVries coached the Drake Bulldogs for 6 seasons. Drake, before DeVries’s inaugural season, had not won 20 games in a season since 1970. In each of DeVries’ 6 seasons, they won 20 or more games there.
This year at West Virginia, DeVries turned around 9 9-win teams in the previous year to a 19-win team that was the biggest snub of the March Madness tournament. West Virginia this year had wins over the number 3 ranked Gonzaga, number 24 ranked Arizona, number 7 ranked Kansas, and number 2 ranked Iowa State. West Virginia was not invited to the big dance because of a tough loss to Colorado at the beginning of the Big 12 tournament.
Things were looking up for West Virginia’s basketball program, but then the school was hit with the news that coach DeVries would leave after just one season and head to Indiana to coach the Hoosiers.
ESPN’s Mag Dog Russo spoke out on how atrocious and ‘soft’ this move was for the new Indiana coach to make. ESPN’s Pat McAfee also spoke about this coaching move on his show. He called DeVries “public enemy number 1” in West Virginia, and it is because he is an excellent basketball coach.
Indiana Hoosiers should be happy with this move from their new basketball coach. Everywhere he has gone, he has improved the program, and one of the collegiate basketball blue blood programs now has a coach who can bring some relevancy back to the program.
KEEP READING: West Virginia Coaching Candidates: Top 5 Potential Replacements for Darian DeVries
For a program that has had the great Bob Knight lead them to three National Championships and Tom Crean, who led the Hoosiers to three regional semifinals, they hopefully have a guy who can give them great success. Indiana has not made the regional semifinal since the 2015-2016 season.
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