West Virginia To Hire Drake’s Darian DeVries As Coach: Report
The West Virginia Mountaineers are reportedly finalizing a deal to hire Drake men’s basketball Darian DeVries as their head coach, per ESPN.
DeVries is currently the head coach at Drake. He would replace Josh Eilert, who was the interim head coach this season after Bob Huggins resigned as head coach last summer.
DeVries would take over a Mountaineers team that won just nine game under Eilert and finished last in the Big 12 Conference.
DeVries, 48, has spent most of his playing and coaching career in Iowa and Nebraska. He played for Northern Iowa and then spent 17 years as an assistant coach at Creighton before he went to Des Moines, Iowa, to take over the Drake Bulldogs.
As a head coach he’s made Drake a consistent winner. He never won fewer than 20 games in six seasons, leading the Bulldogs to one Missouri Valley Conference regular season crown and the last two MVC Tournament titles. He’s led the Bulldogs to the NCAA Tournament three times, including the last two seasons.
Drake lost to Washington State in the first round of this year’s NCAA Tournament.
This news comes less than a day after reports that Michigan was set to hire FAU coach Dusty May, a coach that just about every athletic director was targeting for their open position.
The Field of 68 reported that his son, Tucker DeVries, will transfer to Morgantown with his father.
Assuming DeVries and West Virginia complete the deal, there will be one open job in the Big 12, which is at Oklahoma State, where the Cowboys fired Mike Boynton Jr. right after their Big 12 Tournament exit.
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
