Exhibition Opener
November 06, 2005 11:36 AM | General
November 6, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The general public will get their first look at the 2005-06 West Virginia University basketball team when the Mountaineers take on Wheeling Jesuit in an exhibition game Monday night at the WVU Coliseum. Tip off is set for 7 pm and admission is $5; WVU students get in for free with student ID.
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| West Virginia coach John Beilein talks to his team during a preseason practice last month.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
Mountaineer coach John Beilein is attempting to fit five weeks worth of preseason planning into a four-week period with West Virginia opening its regular season two weeks early playing Louisiana-Monroe on Saturday, Nov. 12, in the Guardians Classic.
“It will be good to play someone else,” Beilein said earlier this week. “But the difference between a four-week and a five-week prep I’ve found it to be very difficult.”
Because West Virginia has such a veteran team with four starters and seven key contributors returning from last year’s Elite Eight team, Beilein has been able to proceed at a much quicker pace. Yet he’s also leery of moving too fast because a couple of new players are going to figure prominently in this year’s plans.
“I sense that we’re going to really need two of the new players either Rob (Summers), Joe (Alexander) or Alex (Ruoff) to help us and of course it can be too confusing for them. We’re trying to move fast but sometimes it hurts you when you move too fast,” Beilein said.
The young players are making progress but they are also making freshmen mistakes that can only be corrected in time.
“We had 90 clips from the closed scrimmage and 30 of them were just for the newcomers,” Beilein mentioned. “One third of the clips I don’t need to show … they’re just freshmen mistakes.”
Particularly, Beilein is interested in his younger players playing with the same intensity and competitiveness that the older players are accustomed to. Beilein admits it is a process.
“When they look at the tape and they see Joe Herber, J.D. Collins, Mike Gansey or Patrick (Beilein) diving on the ground for loose balls and they going to say, ‘Oh, that’s how they do it here.’ That’s usually a big part with every freshman that I’ve ever had … they’re not soft, they just don’t know how hard you’ve got to play,” Beilein explained. “There are very few high school programs that practice with the intensity that any college program does.”
Beilein’s biggest concern as his team begins preparing for its regular season opener is its interior defense. Not having 6-foot-11-inch shot-swatter D’or Fischer in the back making up for defensive mistakes was apparent in the team’s first closed scrimmage.
“Our interior defense stood out the most,” said the coach. “We’ll be working on it for the next couple of weeks like crazy. It is not where it has to be and quite frankly I don’t know if anybody’s interior defense is where it should be right now.”
Seven-foot Penn State transfer Rob Summers is the obvious replacement for Fischer, but Beilein points out that Summers is a entirely different player than Fischer.
“He’s not a shot blocker like D’or,” Beilein said. “He’s a very good rebounder and he’ll get his hands in there and be very active. And he has to have the mentality of being a reckless rebounder and get some put-backs.”
Coming from playing in the Big Ten Conference will be an asset for Summers, but Beilein cautions that it has been 18 months since he last played in a program that did not win frequently.
“Having a year off he’s got to get back into it and his team didn’t have a lot of success in the Big Ten as well and we don’t accept that here,” Beilein said.
Another option not yet explored is having 6-foot-8-inch freshman forward Joe Alexander play the five position in case of foul trouble or injury.
“He’s as quick as anyone I’ve ever coached,” Beilein said of Alexander. “Because of that you want to get him in there. But you’re only as quick as you brain is going to react right now and he’s still got a young player’s brain as far as reading what is going on out there.”
Beilein says his staff will begin game-planning for Louisiana-Monroe on Tuesday but will also continue to work in some time teaching the younger players.
“I’m a teacher this time of the year and we gradually teach more and more and we have to teach competitiveness more and more,” he said. “Some kids are just naturally more competitive. For instance the film shows Joe Herber diving to break up a ball where Joe Alexander will stand behind and let his man get the ball. That’s teaching. You can’t yell at Joe for not doing that when he really doesn’t know any different. We gradually show, teach and then we emphasize.”
Briefly:
“J.D. Collins doesn’t score a lot of points but when he’s on the floor we’re playing at a different speed,” Beilein said. “His work habits are so outstanding that it’s a great thing for everyone to see.”
“We’ll miss him at times,” Beilein admitted. “Mike Maker thinks and works a lot like Jeff but there are things that he has done that I have to go over with Mike right now and tell him this is the way I’d like it done and it just takes time to do that.
“But it’s better for the both of us. I’m getting fresh ideas and Jeff can always do the things he’s wanted to do without me being in the way,” Beilein said.
“He’s got to be in the best shape of his life and he’s not yet,” Beilein said. “He’s got some time left to do it and if he doesn’t then his productivity goes down.”
Beilein estimates Pittsnogle has lost about 10 pounds in the last month and he’s still got some more to lose. “He’s working at it,” the coach said.
Junior forward Frank Young was slowed during the off-season with some foot problems and he’s working to get himself back into game shape as well.
“He’s not in the type of shape he needs to be but by (the opener) he should be fine because we’re pushing him hard,” Beilein said.
“It will be a little bit of what Rich (Rodriguez) saw with Syracuse in his opener,” Beilein said.
Yet Beilein realizes his teams have to at least be competitive on the boards knowing that the system he runs doesn’t lend itself to having dominant rebounding teams.
“You just can’t give up easy points,” he said. “Offensively we usually have four outside. In our last scrimmage the other team was sending four guys to the boards every time so they were getting offensive rebounds. We will send between two and three to the boards so that doesn’t lend to offensive rebounding.
“Defensively, the 1-3-1 zone and the way that we end up playing three small forwards does not lend to great rebounding. We don’t have that power guy,” he mentioned.
The one thing that drives Beilein crazy is his team working hard defensively and then giving up a cheap rebound and them getting another possession.
“It hurts me when we really guard like crazy for 30 seconds, they throw up a shot, and they get another 30 seconds,” he admitted. “At the same time we have to be better at that.”
The way his teams usually neutralize the rebounding issue is by making more three-point shots. “Right there is two offensive rebounds that they got points off of,” Beilein calculates.
