Lutz and WVU Coach DeVries Go Back and Are Friends, But Not Saturday

STILLWATER – Sports has lots of situations where friends get matched against each other. My experience is it is always more fun to beat your friends that those people that aren’t. Part of it is you’re going to talk to and see friends more often. Oklahoma State basketball head coach Steve Lutz said he doesn’t talk to West Virginia head coach darian DeVries every week, but they talk often.

“On Saturday at noon (et) at his place, I want to beat his tail and he wants to beat my tail,” Cowboys head coach Steve Lutz said of his former co-assistant coach at Creighton, Darian DeVries. They were there for seven seasons together and now face each other as Big 12 head coaches. 

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Creighton head coach Greg McDermott standing. Steve Lutz far right, Darian DeVries next to him. Photo taken in 2017.

DeVries would have been a candidate at Oklahoma State. He had left Creighton and coaching for Blue Jays head coach Greg McDermott and did an excellent job at Drake. Former Oklahoma State basketball manager Wren baker jumped on hiring DeVries. Oklahoma State athletic director Chad Weiberg quickly followed with the hire of former Creighton and Purdue assistant and three-time NCAA Tournament qualifying head coach Steve Lutz. Lutz had three seasons as a head coach and two at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and one at Western Kentucky all had ended in “March Madness.”

Two friends, two coaches that know each other well, coaching in the same league and this Saturday on the same court. 

“I don’t think either one of us are egomaniacs,” Lutz said. “We’re confident people, but but we don’t think highly of ourselves like we should be coaching the Spurs or the Lakers. Both of us were raised the right way, good values, our families are great. We talked about it over the summer that we’re in one of the best basketball conferences in college basketball. We have to figure out ways to win. That is the task. I’m proud of myself, I’m proud of him, I’m proud of myself, and he’s proud of me. That’s the human side of it.”

That is one of the side stories to this matchup on Saturday at 11 a.m. (central) televised on CBS Sports Network. Another is that DeVries and his Mountaineers without two key players, his son, Tucker DeVries, and Amani Hansberry, the second and third leading scorers on the team.

Lutz said he did not expect those two to play as DeVries has missed the past four games and Hansberry has missed two-in-a-row. He said he doesn’t expect his old coaching buddy to pass along an injury report, but the did say if anybody had connections he would appreciate a heads up.

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Javon Small on Tuesday at Kansas. WVU won 62-61.

Former Oklahoma State guard Javon Small will play. Small was asked by Lutz to stay and help build the foundation for the Cowboys. He chose to transfer and ended up at West Virginia. It was Small tthat scored 13 points including the clinching free throw in the 62-61 win West Virginia had in Allen Fieldhouse on New Year’s Eve upsetting Kansas and winning in Lawrence for the first time ever.

“That’s a good win, Kansas on the road,” Lutz said. “That is special and not many teams experience that.”

You also have Cowboys backup wing Pat Suemnick having transferred to OSU from West Virginia. Lutz was asked if he needs to caution the Mountaineer turned Cowboy about extra emotion in the game?

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Suemnick meeting the media on Thursday.

“I don’t think so, Pat’s an even-keeled person,” Lutz said. “Sometimes he thinks a little too much because he’s a thinker. While he has some special memories there, most of the people he shared those with are gone.”

The WVU Coliseum is an old building, one with character and characteristics. I asked Suemnick if he had some things to tell his teammates.

“I will tell them when we are on the way, Suemnick said. “The old Coiliseum has some of those idiosyncracies.”

Here’ hoping for a good scouting report all the way around and a good performance. This would be a win, on the road, that would count big.