MORGANTOWN — When it comes down to it, there are just three reasons why college basketball coaches strive to earn a shot at taking over a Power Five Conference school.
The first two are obvious: The pay is substantially higher and there is more access to the better recruits.
The third one is a little more tricky, because it brings up the ultimate question of advantages involving the size of the fish and the size of the pond.
For a moment, take the money and the recruiting advantages out of the equation and then bring WVU men’s basketball coach Darian DeVries into it.
This time last year, DeVries was the big fish in the smaller pond at Drake University and the Missouri Valley Conference.
He turned the Bulldogs into an annual NCAA tournament contender in that league and did so with a strength of schedule nowhere in comparison to what he faces at WVU today.
At WVU, so far he’s made some terrific early impressions, yet the Mountaineers are struggling to stay in the NCAA conversation in a brutal league with the type of cross-country exploration that only Jacques Cousteau could appreciate.
The difference is WVU finds itself heading into today’s 7 p.m. game against Cincinnati inside the Coliseum with a 15-10 record.
Had he been 15-10 at this point last season at Drake, the DeVries’ family could have already planned out a spring vacation, because the NCAA tournament would have been out of the question.
In the Big 12, 15-10 and 11th place in the league is an entirely different conversation.
So, which fish and which pond is more suitable for hunting for a bid to the NCAA tourney? That’s what we asked DeVries.
“You do have to adjust a little, because you are taking on more losses,” he began. “Whether I was at Drake or Creighton before that or here, the mindset is still the next game.
“The losses, they hang with you a little longer, but you can’t let it hang on too long.”
The defeats, to be sure, stink no matter what level or what league you coach in.
It’s the wins that get judged differently. Sure, you need more of them at a school like Drake to be taken seriously, but the argument is made those wins are a little easier to come by.
In the Power Five, you can feast on the middle-tier and lower-tier teams in your conference, beat no one of significance and then pound your chest about how strong the league is and how your team deserves to be in the NCAA field.
There are at least a dozen Power Five schools in that category right now. Cincinnati is one of those teams. Pitt is one of those teams, as is pretty much half of its ACC brethren.
All of them, if the tournament field were to be announced this week, would be taken way more seriously than Drake, which is currently 23-3, or schools such as Utah State (22-4) or New Mexico (22-4) from the Mountain West.
“They’re two different types of pressure,” DeVries said. “At Drake, we understood that we couldn’t drop a couple in conference play. Conferences are all hard. You play so many games in any league, you’re going to have a bad night.”
“The good part is we’re now in a league that has a lot of really good teams and you’re going to have a couple of nights where you don’t have it, but you can survive those nights.”
Surviving just may be the key word in this equation and this is where the bigger pond will always win out, because that bigger pond springs out more life, more opportunity.
In truth, DeVries may have had more talented teams at Drake than he currently has in his first season with the Mountaineers.
Yet his first WVU team is getting lost in the Big 12’s shuffle at the moment and is still in the conversation.
That’s an advantage to the big pond.
“I feel like we have enough components that we have a team that can make the NCAA tournament and go win some games,” DeVries said. “We understand that it doesn’t matter what I think or what someone else thinks. We need to keep winning games.”
