GETTING TO KNOW YOU: There’s a new basketball sheriff in town. His name is Darian DeVries and over the next few days we’ll try to introduce you to him as a basketball coach and player. TODAY: Learning to drive and where to eat.
MORGANTOWN — As a basketball coach, taking a new job is more than just building a roster and getting to know your players. It’s things you never think about. Ask West Virginia’s new basketball coach Darian DeVries, who may be coaching in the new Big 12 but who goes back to the old Big Eight, who was raised on beef and corn in the Midwest, coached for more than the last two decades in Nebraska at Creighton, and Iowa at Drake.
It’s starting over, no matter where you are. Like, in that first week stopping to ask directions to the Coliseum, which is where your office is. And learning that it’s an adventure just getting from here to there every time you get behind the wheel of your car.
“I’ve had to learn how to drive again,” he said on Wednesday afternoon at the WVU Basketball Practice Facility. “My heavy foot, I’ve had to learn to pull it back a bit. Back home, you can text while you drive, no big deal.
The curvy roads are real here.” Everything is flat and straight. Truth is, to go from Des Moines to Washington, Pa.
, 800 miles, you just head east on I-80 and if you look it up on a map, it’s one straight line across country before you turn south for about 50 miles to Morgantown. And once you get there, where do you eat? DeVries.
