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MORGANTOWN -- After the debacle that was the 2023-24 West Virginia season came undone because Bob Huggins, who had been a rock of stability for the program, when athletic director Wren Baker went off in a search of a new coach, he was looking for who had proven his roots would run deep upon his arrival.
True, being able to coach a bit mattered more than that, but Baker's approach to hiring a coach was to find one who would first create a winning program but then would see it through to the end. He was looking for a quick fix but for a long-time commitment, and that was what he saw in Darian DeVries of Drake.
Call it 3-D vision, if you must, but he made it clear early in his presentation while introducing DeVries last week.
"While he's won big, he's done so with integrity. The most impressive stat on Darian is in 23 years he's only been at two places," Baker said. "He's amazingly loyal and showed maturity to not just chase the next job. He invests in people, he's a positive person with positive energy and a hard worker.
"He made it clear he didn't just want a job, he wanted this job. That was made clear by what I heard about other people in and around athletics as he was giving cold shoulders to those other schools that were engaging him."
The words reverberated throughout the Coliseum when Baker said them and that was less a product of the audio system than it was of importance of what he was saying.
In an age when players who feel they don't play enough that they change uniforms faster than Superman could get into his in a phone booth, DeVries stayed 20 years at Creighton as a grad assistant and then assistant coach after his playing career at Northern Iowa was completed with him both a 1,000-point scorer there and two-time captain.
Why?
It was, he said, love.
"I spent 20 years at Creighton University because that was the place I loved, that was a place my family loved," he said. "I wasn't going to leave Creighton University for just any job at the time."
Let's emphasize his point. Some guys want to be a head coach so badly they'd take on the Bad News Bears.
Not DeVries.
"I wanted the right one when I got my first head coaching job, and to me that was Drake University," said. "There was a vision there, there was a plan there. I spent the last six years there and it was incredible."
Drake was not a basketball power. It didn't have a Jerry West or Hot Rod Hundley in its history. It didn't have three Final Four appearances as WVU does.
It was maybe 200 or so mid-majors or less who dream big but haven't really been able to make the leap into the headlines.
As Wren Baker pointed out they had won 20 or more games just 11 times and DeVries owned six of those in his six years at the school. The school, Baker noted, had in its history gone to the NCAA Tournament just seven times and three of them came in DeVries six years.
Drake, Baker pointed out, has won about 47 percent of its games in 118 years of basketball.
Under DeVries they won 73 percent.
He was the kind of coach WVU was looking for and WVU and the community were what he was looking for. He was making the jump for the money - although there was so much of it at $3 million a year that it certainly weighed into the equation.
But when he spoke, you realized that he might have turned it down if the job were in New York City, Boston, Baton Rouge or Tuscaloosa.
He was a Midwesterner at heart and looking to be a media darling.
He was searching for a good program to coach in a community that would adopt him and his family as eagerly as he wanted to adopt them. Having myself gone from New York City to the University of Missouri for college, I understand what it means to be a Midwesterner.
I never planted a row of corn or plowed a field, but I found out that the people who do are good people, friendly people … a lot like the people right here in West Virginia. To both corn and coal are nothing more than four-letter words that define a region.
What DeVries hasn't experienced is the depth of the passion of Mountaineer fans. They see WVU athletics as an extension of what they are, which is solid. Citizens expect to be well represented by their athletic teams.
They rely heavily on their state university's athletic success to win them some respect of their own in a nation that far too long has looked down upon West Virginians. They want their teams to fight to win games as they fight to win respect.
They loved Bob Huggins because he was one of them; born in Morgantown, graduated from the school he coached. He was tough and demanding and the more he got from the team and the state, the more he gave back.
That is why his downfall was so shocking to the populace and why so many were willing to forgive his transgressions, but that would have been a public relations disaster and considering his age and latest performance as a coach, it was clearly time to turn the page.
It was up to Baker to hire the man to write the history that would come with the next page and he didn't want it to be just a chapter but, instead, to fill many chapters.
Make no doubt, that will be written by the entire family for his son, Tucker, already has announced he's transferring in after a highly decorated career at Drake under his father, following up a high school career where he was Mr. Basketball in Iowa to become a two-time MVC MVP (translation: Missouri Valley Conference Most Valuable Player).
This past year as he fought injuries he still grew as a player, averaging 21 points a game, and is already looking to next year even though his right arm is in a sling due to off-season shoulder surgery.
You can be isolated away from the community as a college basketball player, but there's another in the family in daughter, Tatum, who is tall for a freshman and talented and well could wind up a teammate of women's basketball coach Mark Kellogg's daughter Kayli, who was an All-Stater this season at Morgantown High, which would probably draw some national attention.
Of course, she also could wind up an opponent should she play at University High.
It's expected that DeVries will push for a couple more of his players from Drake who have entered the transfer portal to follow him here, although the leap from Drake to the Big 12 is far more of a jump than players may think.
DeVries roster shaping can't be aimed at any quick fix because he wasn't hired to become an instant celebrity, simply to become the man to shape West Virginia's basketball future.