Self Improvement Tour
December 04, 2006 05:29 PM | General
December 4, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – December is officially the month of self improvement for the Mountaineer basketball program. While others are trying to collect key RPI wins to point back to when March rolls around, West Virginia coach John Beilein is simply trying to move his young team from point A to point B.
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| Junior guard Darris Nichols leads West Virginia with a 12-points-per-game scoring average.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
“What we’re trying to do is stay the course of individual improvement,” Beilein said Monday afternoon. “Unlike football we’ve got 30 different games and an early loss doesn’t cost you your season.”
Their next assignment comes Wednesday night against a surprisingly good N.C. State team that is coming off a tough, 67-62 loss at Virginia Sunday night.
Beilein has liked what he’s seen so far from a Wolfpack club that lost nearly all of their top players from last season’s NCAA tournament team.
“I watched their game against Virginia and I have a tape of some other games. What I see right now is they have seven very talented players that Sidney (Lowe) is using and they have some very interchangeable parts,” Beilein said.
Both programs are undergoing remodeling jobs and are probably ahead of schedule. West Virginia lost four of its five starters and five of its top six players to graduation last year. Heading into this year the team had the fewest amount of returning points since 1973.
N.C. State lost four of its five starters from last year’s team to go along with its coach Herb Sendek, who took the Arizona State job. Former Wolfpack Sidney Lowe has been able to get State off to a 5-1 start despite going just two deep off his bench.
“Sidney has done a great job of utilizing the scholarship players that he was left with there,” Beilein said. “They are going to have a good year and they have already started to have a good year.”
One of those players is 6-foot-7-inch forward Dennis Horner, a Lindwood, N.J. resident and a one-time WVU recruiting target.
“He’s a very good player and North Carolina State is very fortunate to have a player like Dennis because he’s got a tremendous upside, he’s got a great family, and he’s a versatile player that a lot of people would want,” Beilein said. “He chose a very good place to play and he’ll do well there.”
Six-seven guard/forward Gavin Grant is State’s top scorer averaging 17.5 points per game. The junior played all 40 minutes against Virginia on Sunday and finished the game with 15 points, eight assists and six rebounds.
Brandon Costner, a 6-8, 230-pound forward from Montclair, N.J., is averaging 15.5 points and 8.2 rebounds per game. Costner had a team-high 17 points on 7 of 13 shooting against the Cavaliers.
Ben McCauley (13.7 ppg.), Engin Atsur (13.8) and Courtney Fells (10.2) are also averaging double figures.
“There are some similarities with what they do and what other Big East teams do. There are some differences as well,” Beilein said. “When you have interchangeable players like they do they are tough to defend.”
For West Virginia, scoring has come from different players but junior guard Darris Nichols is emerging as one of the team’s go-to guys. Nichols had a team-high 15 in the 71-64 loss to Arkansas in the championship game of the Old Spice Classic and had a career-high 18 in the win against Western Michigan.
Nichols is averaging 12 points and four assists per game. Six-eight forward Joe Alexander is averaging 11.2 points and 3.2 rebounds per game while Frank Young has boosted his scoring average to 10.8 points per game after struggling through a 1-for-13 shooting slump from 3-point distance at the beginning of the season.
Beilein said it was simply a matter of riding it out.
“We really didn’t know what to do other than have a lot of confidence in him,” Beilein said. “We didn’t want to overreact because he’s such a steady performer.
“When Frank hits three 3s in a game we’re pretty good,” Beilein said. “I remember when he made his debut as a starter against Boston College in the Garden a couple of years ago he hit two or three and ever since he’s been a predominant player in our lineup. I want him to get to the foul line more and I want him driving more because he can do all those things and not just be known as a 3-point shooter.”
Alex Ruoff and Rob Summers are expected to join Nichols, Alexander and Young in West Virginia’s starting lineup Wednesday night.
“I like the attitude that we have. The team chemistry is growing,” Beilein said. “We had a really good practice on Sunday that showed us that they are communicating with each other. That’s what we need because we lost so much, not just in personnel but also personality. Right now we’re starting to develop a personality that I like.”
Tip off is set for 7 pm and the game will be televised locally by ESPN Plus (Dave Weekly and Bucky Waters). Tickets can be purchased by calling the Mountaineer Ticket Office toll-free at 1-800-WVU GAME or through the Charleston Civic Center Box Office at (304) 345-1500.
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“Both CBS and ESPN proposed those games and I’m not sure which one affected it but we called North Carolina State and asked that we take a year off and it just worked out that way,” Beilein said.
“When we were scrambling to put our schedule together we had a gap there we could have actually played a game and we elected not to play it,” Beilein said. “We thought if we could get six days of practice in just to make ourselves better that that would be more important than preparing for another team this past Saturday.”
Beilein says that the Arkansas tape has been a useful teaching tool.
“Arkansas showed us the things that we need to emphasize more in practice,” he said. “That’s really what coaching is. Every coach has different emphasis and while you can’t emphasize everything we saw some of the things that we need to be a little bit stronger with and we saw some things that we were doing pretty well and we need to enhance.”
“We have such a big freshman class and we’re trying to spread them out a little bit,” Beilein said. “We can’t give them the attention now that we would like but just being around they’re making strides. The biggest strides are coming from the Da’Sean Butlers and the Joe Alexanders who are playing more.”
“We try like crazy and it’s sort of our style of play,” Beilein said. “We don’t get a lot of offensive rebounds because of the fact that we have four guys out on the perimeter. Defensively you just look at our weights and we have a whole lot of 205 and 210-pound guys and probably not enough 215-to-225-pound guys. We get beat up a little bit but we think we make up for it by not turning the ball over.
“It’s really not a rebounding game but a game of possessions,” Beilein explained. “Who can get the most possessions in the game? If you get a shot every time then you’ve had good possessions.”
