BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 12, 2025

Darian DeVries

Toby Okani

Javon Small

T-Mobile Center

West Virginia Mountaineers

Postgame Press Conference

Colorado 67, West Virginia 60

THE MODERATOR: Joining us on the dais is West Virginia Head Coach Darian DeVries, and student-athletes Javon Small and Toby Okani. We'll go straight to questions.

Q. Coach, obviously really successful defensively in the first half. They got their postgame going in the second half. Any changes to the way that you played that and the adjustments you would have liked to have made that maybe you couldn't?

DARIAN DeVRIES: Yeah, I thought they went to a little more floppy action in the second half and were able to throw it inside. They've been pretty good all year when you bring a double team kicking it out for open threes.

A little bit of foul trouble played a part in it. We weren't quite as aggressive defensively maybe as we needed to be. We went and brought help. One time we gave out a kick-out three, so we were kind of in a tough spot in whether to come or not to come.

But they did a good job of taking advantage of that.

Q. Javon, you got off to a great offensive start and then your shot wasn't falling. Did Colorado do something differently attacking you considering you got off to such a great start?

JAVON SMALL: I don't know. I got to be more aggressive throughout the whole game. Like Coach said, they were in the floppy. Had me running around, and then I'm just a natural playmaker, in my opinion, so I just thought I could make the right play. Started dishing the ball off, but, yeah, I just gotta be more aggressive.

Q. Javon, is one of the more difficult things realizing when they're going to run doubles at you, just deny you the ball, versus when they might be playing you straight up? Seemed like they switched that back and forth a little bit. Is that the toughest read you have in the half-court?

JAVON SMALL: No, it's not a tough read. I've been facing all different types of defenses all year, whether it was a double team or triple team or one-on-one and everybody being in the gap.

Like I said I came out hot first half. Second half I just came out a little bit slower, so I just got to do a better job of that.

Q. Toby, is it difficult to keep shooting when things aren't dropping? Several guys had open looks that would usually fall that just didn't fall this afternoon.

TOBY OKANI: They instill confidence in us, so sometimes if the ball doesn't go in every single time, and they shot the good shots.

Q. Coach, I know this is fresh, but what's your message to the team moving forward, waiting for Selection Sunday?

DARIAN DeVRIES: I think the biggest thing for us is certainly disappointed with the loss, maybe how it happened. But we can't change that now, so the biggest thing for us is, hey, we're going to have another opportunity to play and we're going to get a chance to go back and regroup like we have all year, we're going to reset.

We're going to do and focus on some of the things that we need to clean up from this game, but more importantly, come back and get our minds right and then get ready to go try to make a run.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much.