MORGANTOWN — The time has come to talk about the DeVries basketball family of Morgantown, at least father and son.

Daughter Tatum’s time is to come as she is a sophomore playing lights out at Morgantown High, but the focus here is on West Virginia Mountaineer basketball and that puts daddy Darian, the coach, and son Tucker, the player, in the spotlight.

We have abided quite patiently with Darian DeVries’ decree that this was a team that would have “No Excuses”, a worthy credo to follow if you happen to be one of his players. See, this is an agreed-upon approach by all involved with the team that bad calls, unlucky breaks, travel delays and injuries would be viewed as nothing more than the ordinary events that come with a basketball season and that the only way to handle them is to ignore them.

So it was that when Tucker DeVries, who transferred into WVU this year to finish his final year of eligibility with his father, saw his surgically repaired shoulder begin bothering him six games back, the injury has been very real but also very much shoved into the background as the Mountaineers won their first five games without his participation as anything beyond an unpaid assistant coach and cheerleader.

But, when Arizona came to town and faced the Mountaineers not only without DeVries but without Jayden Stone, who had averaged 20 points a game at his last stop at Detroit Mercy but who has yet to play a minute this year; without KJ Tenner, a precocious freshman guard off the bench who plays a key role in averaging almost half a game per outing; and then without versatile big man Amani Hansberry, whose rebounding, inside play and outside ability to hit 3-point shots,who missed one game and went out not to return in the second half of that Arizona loss the moment arrived where this all could not be ignored.

Noble as it is to shrug off excuses, injuries are very real and do affect a team’s on-court play and off-court demeanor. You build a team to do certain things and each time you subtract a piece from that puzzle, be it offensive or defensive, you must try to adjust with something that you didn’t feel was of equal value.

Even as Arizona shook off the blast of cold air that hit it in the face as it arrived from the desert that serves as its home into the cold reality of West Virginia winter, the injury absences were terribly obvious.

Bravely, the elder DeVries took the high route and once again refused to lean on such as an excuse, but as he did so he sounded like an Indianapolis 500 driver explaining that attempting to win the race with two flat tires for the final 100 miles did not matter in the final result.

When asked about the injury list, DeVries simply said: “I mean, we played seven guys. We’re fine. Injuries happen, foul trouble happens. We’re going to play. That’s just part of it.”

It is a big part of it, as his opponent, Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd would point out during his time on the podium.

Sometimes it takes one coach to alibi for another while appreciating how well that other coach, in this case DeVries, has done against large odds.

“These guys, I mean Darian is doing such a good job,” Lloyd said. “He’s done an amazing job in his first year and I know they’ve had some crazy injuries and he’s dealt with it. To be honest with you, their starting lineup was pretty magical. I mean, you win some of these close games …. you beat an Arizona, you beat a Gonzaga, you beat a Kansas.

“Are you kidding me?” he continued. “If I was that guy’s agent, I would have two more years in that contract right now. So, they’ve got off to an amazing start, and we knew we had to come out and be steady today.”

And that’s what they were, coming from the lessons they learned in the Bahamas when WVU beat them in overtime the first time they played in the Battle 4 Atlantis.

The difference? Well, Arizona did some different things with their big men that made a difference, but Lloyd was straightforward and honest as he mentioned the biggest difference in the game.

The young DeVries, Tucker, the two-time Larry Bird Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year and two-time conference tournament MVP was absent the second time around.

In that first meeting, DeVries scored 26 points and hit 8 3-point shots — 8 of them, as many as the entire WVU team hit in Tuesday night’s loss.

“The best thing we did in scouting was the guy who made eight 3s didn’t play, to be honest,” Lloyd said Tuesday night. “He’s a heck of a player. You make a 30-footer, that’s a hell of a play, and he did. That’s a tough loss for them. I don’t know his injury status, but they are a more dangerous team with him in the lineup.”

No one knows his injury status, for DeVries keeps injury reports as close to the vest as his heart itself.

Will he be back this year? No one knows. He can only play one more game before losing a potential redshirt injury.

But, at least now, it’s out there. The injuries WVU has suffered, none worse than DeVries, detracts from the Mountaineers’ ability to win games.

That’s not an excuse. It’s a reality.