Whether Staff or Players, There’s Plenty of Ties Between Oklahoma State and West Virginia

STILLWATER — The term “crossover” will be a double entendre when it comes to the Cowboys’ game against the Mountaineers this weekend.

There will be plenty of crossovers on the floor when Oklahoma State and West Virginia tip at 11 a.m. Central on Saturday in Morgantown, but there is also a lot of crossover between these two programs right now. Cowboy Patrick Suemnick was at West Virginia the past two seasons. Mountaineer Javon Small was at OSU last season. First-year coaches Steve Lutz and Darian DeVries are also familiar with each other, having spent seven seasons together as assistants on Greg McDermott’s staff at Creighton.

Starting with the Cowboy-turned-Mountaineer — Small is leading the Big 12 in scoring this season, averaging 19.2 points a game. Small spent just one season in Stillwater, transferring in from East Carolina, but Lutz said Thursday that Small could have spent a second year with the Cowboys.

“Javon Small, he had an opportunity to come back here,” Lutz said. “If he wanted to come back here, he’d be a Cowboy today. You think he’s not gonna be excited about sticking it to us? He’s, obviously, in terms of scoring in the Big 12, he’s the best, if not one of the best. …

“I recruited Javon and tried to get him to stay here. He knew that we wanted him to be a part of our program, and he chose otherwise. Knowing him the way I know him, he’ll be juiced up to go against Oklahoma State — probably would be the same way if he went against East Carolina, as well. He’s a competitive person. He’s a very good player.”

Small hit a go-ahead free throw Tuesday to give WVU its first win in Allen Fieldhouse. Small has surpassed 20 points in five games already this season, putting up a season-high 31 in the Mountaineers’ 86-78 overtime win against Gonzaga in the Battle 4 Atlantis.

Jamyron Keller, who has started OSU’s past three games, spent a formative freshman season watching Small and said there were things he picked up from the veteran guard.

“I learned a lot from Javon,” Keller said. “Whether it was talking off the court or guarding him on the court, I think he allowed me to expand my game a little bit and just see what he does good and see him every day in practice and see how he works in practice. I’d say he helped me a little bit.”

Suemnick played in 53 games across two seasons as a Mountaineer. He’s not a stranger to a big game against the Jayhawks as a Mountaineer, either. He scored a career-high 20 points against KU last season, as WVU beat the Jayhawks in Morgantown. It sounds like Suemnick is pretty eager to hit the Country Roads.

“It is a different staff, all new guys for the most part,” Suemnick said, “but something about playing in that gym and seeing everybody who I know from the last couple years about being there, I’m excited for it.”

Lastly, Lutz and DeVries are in their first seasons as high-major head coaches. DeVries joined the Creighton staff back in 2001 under Dana Altman and stayed with the program when the Bluejays hired McDermott in 2010. McDermott brought Lutz in as part of his first staff in Omaha, having Lutz and DeVries with him until Lutz left for Purdue in 2017. DeVries left in 2018 to be the head coach at Drake, where he was before WVU hired him this past offseason. Lutz’s journey was a bit more winding, spending four seasons as an assistant at Purdue before spending two seasons as Texas A&M-Corpus Christi’s head man and one at Western Kentucky.

“We keep in touch,” Lutz said. “It’s not like we call each other once a week and say, ‘Hey, what’d you do against this team or that team?’ But we certainly, especially in the nonconference, have spoken and talked about things within our league. If I have a question, ‘Hey, how do you attack this?’ or he has a question, ‘Hey, what do you think about this?’ We’ll certainly talk with one another, and our families are still close. You don’t spend seven years working on the same staff and not have a relationship. …

“I’m sure he’s proud of himself. I’m proud of myself. I’m proud for him. He’s proud for me. That’s the human side of it, but on Saturday at noon at his place, I wanna beat his tail. And he wants to beat my tail. That doesn’t go away.”