No. 21 WVU looks a lot different since first meeting against Arizona

MORGANTOWN — It would seem so much has changed since WVU last met Arizona just 40 days ago in The Bahamas.

“The biggest thing is we’ll go from 80 degrees to 20 degrees,” joked WVU men’s basketball coach Darian DeVries. “That’s a big adjustment.”

Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday inside the Coliseum.

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The changes go further than the temperature.

For starters, it was Arizona (8-5, 2-0 Big 12) facing high expectation in November with a national ranking.

The Mountaineers (11-2, 2-0) now have that cross to bear, moving up to No. 21 in the AP poll this week on the strength of a 3-0 record against ranked teams this season, including that 83-76 overtime win against the Wildcats on Nov. 29.

It’s the first time WVU has been ranked in the AP poll since Dec. 26, 2022, a stay that lasted just one week.

Can DeVries find a way to make this stay a little longer?

It would be hard to bet against him at this point, with the Mountaineers riding high after a historic road win against then-No. 7 Kansas and following that up with a 19-point victory against Oklahoma State, in which the Cowboys were held to just 33.3% shooting.

“It started off kind of slow, but our defense kind of turned our offense up,” DeVries said after the Oklahoma State game. “We started to get some transition threes and some lay-ups.”

The biggest difference will be in the starting lineup for the Mountaineers, which had guard Tucker DeVries for the first meeting in The Bahamas. He connected on eight 3-pointers in that meeting and finished with 26 points.

DeVries has since been battling an upper-body injury and has missed the last five games and likely won’t play against Arizona this time.

“We’re a little bit different with our personnel,” Darian DeVries said. “We’ll take what we can from that first game and apply it to what we’re doing now and what they’re doing now.”

What Arizona is doing now is battling back from a disappointing start to the season. The Wildcats have won four in a row, including their first two Big 12 games against TCU and Cincinnati.

In those two Big 12 wins, the Wildcats shot 50% (56 of 111) from the floor and point guard Caleb Love led the way with a combined 45 points.

“The biggest situation is we’ve found a way,” Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd said after Arizona beat Cincinnati. “Our guys hung in there. We had a big lead, and this has happened to us before this year, but games get tough. I thought our guys did a good job of hanging with it.”

Arizona is 1-2 against AP-ranked teams this season, losing to Duke and UCLA, and its win against Cincinnati knocked the Bearcats out of the top 25.

“These guys have been amazing, they deserved this win,” Lloyd said. “It was kind of a pivotal moment for our season.”

The marquee match-up will be at point guard, where Love came into the season expected to be one of the top lead guards in the country.

WVU’s Javon Small has exceeded all expectations and has put himself into that conversation, too.

In the Nov. 29 meeting, Small had 14 points and eight assists, while Love finished with 24 points and six rebounds.

Small, who was named Big 12 Player of the Week, is leading the league in scoring at 19.5 points per game. He’s also sixth in the conference in steals and ninth in assists.

Love is fourth in the Big 12 in scoring at 16.3 points per game.

“He’s a winner,” Lloyd said of Love. “I love being in the fight with him. We love the guy and we’re going to ride with him.”