MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia's preparations for its three-game tour of Italy in early August are well underway.
 
Coach Darian DeVries' Mountaineers are scheduled to depart Morgantown on Wednesday, July 31, and will play games in Genoa on Saturday, Aug. 3, in Florence on Tuesday, Aug. 6, and in Rome on Thursday, Aug. 8.
 
Game updates will be provided on the @wvuhoops social media accounts.
 
All the players listed on this year's roster, except for football player Aden Tagaloa-Nelson, will be traveling to Italy and most of them are expected to see action.
 
Washington State transfer Joseph Yesufu has not yet been fully cleared to play, but Drake transfer Tucker DeVries was given the green light to resume full contact work last Tuesday and was out on the floor practicing earlier today.
 
Based on what the elder DeVries has added to the roster so far, the 2024-25 Mountaineers are going to be an older, more mature team with at least seven guys who are either seniors or fifth-year players.
 
Tucker DeVries and Detroit Mercy transfer Jayden Stone were prolific scorers last year at their respective schools, while Oklahoma State transfer Javon Small has probably the most Big 12 experience, averaging 15.1 points and 4.1 assists last year for the Cowboys.
 
Senior center Eduardo Andre, a 6-foot-11, 250 pounder who played last season at Fresno State, is the Mountaineers' tallest player. WVU's only other post with Big 12-type size is 6-foot-8, 240-pound sophomore Amani Hansberry, who spent last season at Illinois.
 
Everyone else on the roster is listed at either 210 pounds or less, including the team's lone holdover, Ofri Naveh, who now appears to be heavier than his listed weight of 185 pounds.
 
"We'd love to have size, and sometimes you don't have it, so how do you offset it?" DeVries said following today's practice. "There is still a physicality that can make that a more even benchmark for us, and that's the piece that we're growing into and learning to understand. 
 
"If we're going to be undersized, we have to do certain things to make sure we can survive on the glass and to make sure we can survive guarding the ball, whatever those things may be. There aren't any shortcuts to it," he noted.
 
"Even in a scrimmage today, when you see one team get up by 17 or 18, they're making shots, and the other team wasn't. But it's more about, how do you stay in those games when you are not making shots, and that's how you have to rely on your defense and rely on rebounding because you're not going to shoot it well every night," he said. "You need to be able to stay in those games and find a different way to win, and the best formula is to guard better and rebound better."
 
The Mountaineers have two scholarship freshmen on the roster in guards KJ Tenner and Jonathan Powell, and both displayed a willingness to compete in practice today. 
 
Tenner was Tennessee's Class 4A Mr. Basketball, while Powell was Ohio's Division I Mr. Basketball at Centerville High in Dayton. 
 
DeVries is high on both.
 
The coach said the No. 1 objective with his team right now is creating an identity, whatever form that takes.
 
"What do we want that to be every single day? What does that look like?" he explained. "Like I told them, a day like today, when we have a fan or a supporter come in and watch us, they should be able to leave and know what our identity is. If they can't, then we're not there yet.
 
"We are still working on what that looks like, but we want people to leave our gym talking about how hard we play. We want them to talk about how much energy and enthusiasm we play with – how connected we are – and those are the types of things that take time," he pointed out. "Right now, in the summertime, you have a lot of thinking taking place, so sometimes it's hard to play fast and free when you are having to process stuff in your mind because you get bogged down learning new plays and new terminology."
 
He continued.
 
"What do you talk about? What do you watch on film and how do you practice every day? You can't say your identity is one thing and then you don't reinforce that every day," he admitted. "As coaches, our identity should shine through when somebody comes and watches us practice because if it doesn't then we're not doing the right things to get them there. 
 
"That's our job to make sure when you come watch us play, we play incredibly hard, we play incredibly unselfish, they have a lot of enthusiasm with the game and those are the things we want to be about on an everyday basis," he said. "It doesn't mean everything goes perfectly, it just means you do those things consistently enough and then the wins will follow."
 
Effort and enthusiasm have always been big parts of DeVries' formula for success. His Drake teams were known for outworking their opponents and finding ways to win close basketball games when things were not always going according to plan.
 
"Finding a way," as his son Tucker says.
 
"I think everybody plays fairly hard, it's just when you talk about trying to make an NCAA Tournament or trying to play for a Big 12 championship, you are trying to be in that top 10% of everybody in the country, so what separates you from everybody else is doing?" the coach said. "When everybody has their meetings in the summer, 'Who wants to win a Big 12 championship?' Well, every single team raises their hand. 'What are you going to do to separate you from everybody else?' That's the piece when talking about effort. Everybody is giving effort. How can we give just a little bit more than everybody else?"
DeVries says strides have been made since the beginning of workouts on June 8, although as coaches, they'd like to see even more progress.
 
He says the biggest thing for his guys is learning how to play and win together.
 
"That's the part that probably takes the longest time," he noted. "That's why I'm glad we have summer workouts to work through some of that stuff."
 
In the past, going on foreign tours used to give teams a leg up on everyone else because of the additional practice time together followed by the games. But with the way the NCAA has now restructured offseason practicing, it's not nearly the advantage that it used to be.
 
"It used to be this was a huge deal every four years you get those 10 extra practices because you didn't get access or only had two hours a week," DeVries said. "Now with four hours a week, you get those 10 extra practices, but you can go a little longer. A day like today, this was our Italy practice, so to speak, so you can extend it a little longer and do a few more things."
 
DeVries said he will mix and match lineups in Italy and there won't be much scouting going on because very little is known about the teams they will be playing.
 
"We'll figure out who can shoot the ball and then adjust at halftime," he laughed.
 
Overall, though, it will be a great opportunity for an entirely new group of players to bond and get to know each other before returning to campus when classes start in August.
 
"We've got a whole new group, a whole new staff, and we get to spend 10-11 days together outside of basketball to get to know each other on a more personal level," DeVries concluded.