Darian DeVries shares his feelings on being in a multi-bid league

Over the last six years, Darian DeVries got Drake back to the NCAA Tournaments. The Bulldogs went dancing three times under his watch after going just once since 1971, including this past year after winning another Missouri Valley Conference tournament title.

But only one of those three trips to March Madness came via an at-large bid. In fact, since the MVC lost Creighton in 2013, the league has received just three at-large bids – one of which came in 2021 when Drake snuck in, along with Loyola Chicago. DeVries saw first-hand what it took for a mid-major to make the Big Dance.

Now at West Virginia, DeVries won’t have to sweat as much when it comes to NCAA Tournament bids. The Big 12 presents plenty of opportunities to make the Field of 68, although he pointed out it comes with a trade-off.

“The challenges when you’re at the mid-major level is you know if you’re gonna get an at-large opportunity, you have to be perfect throughout the year, especially with the landscape of the way scheduling works now,” DeVries told Jon Rothstein. “You can’t have one of those bad nights. The reality is, when you play 31 games, you’re gonna have some bad nights. You can get beat by anybody in any league on any given night. The good part is, you don’t have to be perfect when you’re playing a Big 12 schedule.

“The bad part is, you have a lot of really good basketball teams that you’ve got to play every single night because the Big 12 is, what I think, is the best league, especially this upcoming year when you look at it from top to bottom. It’s loaded with really, really good teams. That part’s exciting, and also knowing that you can have an off night and you’re gonna have an off night. You can just bounce back up and try to go get another big challenge that upcoming game.”

Drake was Darian DeVries’ first head coaching job after a long career as an assistant at Creighton, and he got the program back to the top of The Valley. During his time in Des Moines, the Bulldogs went 150-55, including 78-33 with two Arch Madness titles.

Now, he’s taking over in Morgantown at the start of a new chapter. The Bob Huggins Era ended abruptly last year and, after one year under interim Josh Eilert, WVU brought in DeVries to lead the Mountaineers into a new-look Big 12.

Of course, the Big 12 will have a new look this year. Texas and Oklahoma are on the way out, and four newcomers – Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah – are coming in. That means the conference although the conference is losing two Top-50 KenPom teams, it’s adding three. Still, the days of sweating out NCAA Tournament bids are likely over for DeVries if he can get West Virginia back to the top of the league.