MORGANTOWN — Who is next to step up for the WVU men’s basketball team?
Who becomes the next story, the next headline?
At least for a while, those are the questions for the Mountaineers, who are about to play their second game at 5 p.m. Saturday without guard Tucker DeVries, out indefinitely with an upper-body injury.
Bethune-Cookman (2-7), a private university located in Daytona Beach, Fla., is next in line to see how the new-look Mountaineers (7-2) will play without their leading 3-point threat.
Back on Tuesday, WVU players were informed that morning of DeVries’ absence, leaving little time for any type of reaction to settle in.
Now, it’s a real thing.
“The lineups obviously got shifted tonight when you take Tucker’s 30-plus minutes out of there,” WVU head coach Darian DeVries said. “You have to add minutes somewhere.”
And it will create new opportunities for players, who otherwise may not have had them.
Enter senior Joseph Yesufu. Going back to WVU’s trio of overtime thrillers at the Battle 4 Atlantis, the guard was somewhat an afterthought.
He played five minutes against Louisville and saw no action against Gonzaga and Arizona. He also didn’t play in WVU’s victory against Georgetown.
“Going through those things, I had to take it on the chin,” Yesufu said of the lack of playing time. “I had to work harder. I know my teammates will pick me up. As long as I have that, I know I’m straight.”
He responded with four 3-pointers and 14 points in 21 minutes of action in Tuesday’s win against North Carolina Central.
“I’ve seen Joe do that many times before,” DeVries said. “When he was a sophomore at Drake, he finished out the season averaging 25-plus points a night.
“He’s more than capable of having nights like that. As he’s continued to come back from his offseason injury and things, you can see him getting more comfortable. He’s certainly someone we have faith in and trust in to throw out there and do those types of things, because we’ve seen it before.”
Or maybe it could be freshman Jonathan Powell, who broke out of a recent shooting slump to hit six shots for a season-high 17 points.
“We had to rely a lot on spacing and moving and cutting and passing,” DeVries said. “Those are the things we’ll continue to work on as we move forward.”
The Wildcats, coached by former two-time NBA All-Star Reggie Theus, are no strangers to top-level competition this season.
Among Bethune-Cookman’s seven losses are Virginia, Texas Tech, Minnesota, Nebraska and Tulane.
More than anything else, WVU is more concerned about WVU, meaning its defense, passing and teamwork.
“Everybody will be ready,” said Yesufu, who sat out most of last season with a hip injury before transferring to WVU. “It’s always about the next man up with these guys.”
That next guy up just may be Yesufu. He’s been there before, rather it was the 26 points he threw at USC in the 2021 NCAA tournament at Drake, or the 68 combined points he scored in back-to-back games against Evansville or his contributions coming off the bench for two seasons at Kansas.
He just may be getting back into the swing of things just as the Mountaineers need an extra man on deck.
“I’ve been through a lot the past year in recovering,” he said. “Getting those shots to go in really opened it up for me. I feel I’m on lock right now.”
