MORGANTOWN — As West Virginia readied itself to play Gonzaga, the nation's No. 3 team and a 15.5-point favorite over them in the opening game of the Battle 4 Atlantis, they knew that this holiday trip to the Bahamas wasn't going to be all sun, sand, mai tais and scuba diving in the clear blue waters of the Caribbean.
It was a business trip, with basketball the focus and that meant that the coach, Darian DeVries, spent a whole lot of time devising a game plan for the Zags, drilling it into his players and convincing them — and himself — that while the world was watching to see Gonzaga play, they could come up with a way to ruin the Bulldogs' vacation. And so they did, gutting it out through regulation and into overtime in a game that no one outside their locker room thought they would win but a game they knew the could win. And the results was a physical yet thoughtful approach that provided the Mountaineers with their first ever victory over Gonzaga, 86-78, in overtime.
Every coach, of course, knows that it isn't very often that the game plan goes as it's drawn up. If it wasn't that way, then DeVries wouldn't be admitting that he goes into every game with a Plan A and a Plan B, just in case. In this one he never had go to Plan B, as his Plan A frustrated Gonzaga throughout as it stepped out of character and took a different approach to the game.
DeVries' idea was to make it ugly, which his team did, but in the end it turned out to be beautiful. "I like to win," DeVries .
