West Virginia men’s head basketball coach Darian DeVries has been a popular name in the Iowa coaching search due to his ties to the state and university. DeVries was born and raised in Aplington, Iowa and his brother, Jared, played football there in the late 90s.

It’s easy to see the connection, but West Virginia Director of Athletics Wren Baker feels good about the situation and attempted to calm the waters during an appearance on Sportsline with Tony Caridi and Brad Howe on Monday.

“I think the first thing I would caution people is I’ve ran searches and I would say less than 10% of what you read and the speculation out there is true. Social media and the internet and message boards and all of that has certainly created a lot of awareness and attention and there’s some positives to that, but there’s also a lot of negatives. There’s not a lot of fact-checking that goes on with a lot of that. I’ve been in situations on both sides of this where you’re not having a good season and you’re having to contemplate making some hard decisions and where you’ve had a good season and you have people trying to come talk to your coaches.

“I would just tell people when you deal with football and men’s basketball, there’s a lot of pontification and speculation that’s out there. Every coach we have that has a successful year has people reach out to them to see if they’re interested in talking. Every single coach we have. Even with my own job status, I think that’s been speculated about three or four times in the two and a half years I’ve been here, and there was a couple of times people were presuming I was out the door, and it’s just not the case. This is a great situation; this is a great institution, a great place to live. We have an unbelievable fanbase. We’re committed to do what it takes to win, and I think Coach DeVries knows that. We’ve had multiple conversations about what we need to do to make this program better, and he knows that we’re committed to do it, and we’re committed to him. I think that ultimately, he feels very good about what he has here, and I think that the future is very bright for us.

“We knew we had a good coach. We moved quickly to secure him and hire him. We were one of the first to get done last year in the cycle and I think he still appreciates that. I know that he and his family enjoy Morgantown and enjoy being here. When you come from the outside, people treat you so great. We’re both from the Midwest and moved here. I would just tell people to just relax. It’s common for folks when you have success for folks to want to sniff around and inquire about your coaches. But I do feel really good about our situation here and coach knows that we’re committed to him and committed to continue to build the program.”

If DeVries were to leave West Virginia before the end of April 2028, he would owe West Virginia 37.5% of the remaining salary.

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