DeVries family a package deal for West Virginia men's basketball

First off, he brought Mark Kellogg into to coach the women’s basketball team and Kellogg came complete with his daughter, who as a freshman at Morgantown earned All-State honors, and who, you can bet, gets recruited just a little bit every night at home by that coach of the West Virginia women’s team.

And now he’s brought in Darian DeVries to coach the men’s team and one of his first orders of business during his introductory press conference was to announce that he had landed his first Mountaineer recruit.

The player’s name is Tucker. That’s the first name. The last name is — you guessed it — DeVries, his son, who is one of the top recruits in the transfer portal as the Missouri Valley Player of the Year the last two seasons.

And yep, he played for his father at Drake.

“He will be joining us for his senior year. It’s always nice when you get your first recruit. I had to work hard this morning to get that one done,” Daddy Darian said in making the announcement to a cheering crowd.

Immediately, you sensed just what kind of family the DeVries are, wife, Ashley, daughter, Tatum, and son Tucker.

They are close knit and midwestern down-to-earth, the kind of people who you can picture instead of moving into one of those gated houses coaches tend to lean toward these days, will move into a house with a white picket fence.

Tom Shatel is a sports columnist in Omaha, Neb., who knew the DeVries family in the days Darian was an assistant at Drake.

“Great family man, kind of guy you see at his kids’ games or out picking up dinner on the way home,” Shatel related.

But sometimes it’s hard to be a good family man and basketball coach, the job demanding so much of your time and taking you away on travels.

That is why, when introducing his wife Ashley, he said:

“She’s an unbelievably supportive wife to me. We’ve enjoyed our time over the 26 years. We’ve traveled this journey together arm-in-arm and I can’t be more proud to call her my wife.”

And as for daughter, Tatum, a high school freshman, he called her “maybe the kindest, sweetest-hearted girl I know.”

A coach’s family always can’t keep schedules like other families, but there is the idea that they get to do a lot of traveling and this year they’ll have 20 seats for each game for them and their friends to watch Darian coach and Tucker play.

Darian is thankful that he has coached his son at Drake and will continue here.

“The last three years I’ve had the opportunity to coach my son. That’s something in this profession because you miss a lot of while he’s growing up, whether it be weekend tournaments or whatever,” Darian said.

“From a Dad’s perspective, I get a lot of that back and get to spend some day-to-day of time with my son. Now, during practices and games, he’s back to player and I’m back to coach.”

But it’s an experience very few get to take advantage of.

“We’ve enjoyed this ride together and can’t wait for this opportunity during his last year for him to go out and compete with his new teammates and just love everything there is with his new teammates in this program.

“You know, play with guys all having the same ambitions, which is to bring a Big 12 championship here to West Virginia.”

Tucker is a 6-foot-7 shooter who averaged 21 points a game this year and compiled 1,867 points in three seasons at Drake but who isn’t doing much shooting right now, his right arm in a sling after shoulder surgery last week.

“For me to be able to come here for my senior year and be a part of all of this is exciting,” Tucker said. “I’m super excited to be part of it.”

The dynamics of coaching one’s own son or playing for one’s own father are far more complex than just a normal coach-player relationship, but the two have handled it well.

“There’s certainly good days and bad days for both,” DeVries said about playing for his father. “It’s been a lot of fun. I think we both enjoy spending time together. Not everybody gets to experience it, especially at this level. I think, a couple of years from now, we’ll both be able to look back and see how special it really was together.”