Preseason Primer
September 06, 2007 11:47 AM | General
September 6, 2007
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| Bob Huggins |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- There are never enough hours in the day for Bob Huggins. West Virginia’s new basketball coach has spent the last six months fundraising, friend-raising, recruiting and tying up loose ends as he prepares for his first season guiding the Mountaineers.
Huggins had just two opportunities to work with his players last spring and is now getting four of them at a time for two hours a week.
“We’re just trying defensively to shore up some fundamental things that we want to establish,” Huggins told MSN’s Tony Caridi last week. “Athletics is about getting to the ball and we’ve got to do a good job of getting to the ball. Good teams get to the ball and put pressure on the ball and make things happen with their defense.
“I think we’ll continue to shoot the ball and execute offensively the way they’ve done in the past.”
Huggins has made no bones about his desire to improve the team’s strength and defensive toughness – two well-documented areas that were not high on former coach John Beilein’s list of priorities. Huggins admits this year’s team will be a work in progress.
“When I walk in a room and I’m as big as everybody in there that’s not a good sign -- I played point here,” Huggins joked. “We’re not very big so we’ve got to make up for that with maybe some speed and some strength. They’re getting stronger. Are we where we need to be? Absolutely not but we’re getting stronger. They have made some strides and they’re trying – they’re working at it.”
Huggins expects his team to be in much better shape by the time practice starts on Friday, Oct. 12.
“The guys are kind of crawling out there,” Huggins said. “Conditioning is certainly not where we’d like for it to be and it’s going to be three hours that is harder – this hour we’ve got with them right now we’re not going to stop and explain things to them – we’re just going to go.
“Basketball is about fundamental things and doing little things well,” Huggins explained. “What makes it hard is that you do one little thing to the next to the next and then it becomes a complex deal. If you can’t do the little things then you can’t do the big things.”
One area Huggins and his coaches plan to emphasize individually is each player’s footwork.
“Our footwork isn’t very good and it’s got to get a whole lot better,” he said. “Our base has got to get a lot better. And we’ve got to continue to execute on the offensive end.”
West Virginia’s 2007-08 schedule was recently released and the Mountaineers have several difficult road games at Auburn, Notre Dame, Louisville, Pitt, Villanova, DePaul and Connecticut. Huggins has an interesting take on playing road games.
“I asked Al McGuire when I was a young coach when did he think that he had Marquette to where it was a national power and he said it’s when you go play anybody anywhere with no fear. I think that’s what we’ve got to get to,” Huggins said. “Traditionally we’ve been a great home team and not a real good road team. We’ve got to get to the point where we don’t have any fear and just go and play on the road.”
Huggins, as he has with every new job he’s taken, expects to win right away.
“Somebody told me when I was either at Walsh or Akron that I needed to relax because Rome wasn’t built in a day. I explained to them that I wasn’t trying to build Rome,” Huggins said. “I don’t know why you just don’t come in and win? That’s hard sometimes because you don’t have guys that you need to do the things that you want to do and sometimes it’s hard to find anything for them to do.
“This is an exception but generally the other jobs that I’ve had came open because they didn’t win,” Huggins added. “Generally when you don’t win you don’t have very good players. It’s like Yogi (Berra) said, ‘You never see a donkey win the Kentucky Derby.’ You have to have thoroughbreds and we need to kick that up a notch.”
This year’s schedule was essentially finished before Huggins arrived which is why West Virginia is making non-conference road trips to Radford and Canisius.
“I understand why we’re going to Radford because of Darris (Nichols),” Huggins said, offering his philosophy on scheduling.
“I have never been one to go on the road unless it’s three for one,” he said. “Our road games have been television games. Our road games have been with teams that people want to see. The other people you can buy in and do a schedule that way and generate money.
“Jimmy Boeheim takes a hit every year because he doesn’t go on the road. When you’re putting that many people in the Carrier Dome it doesn’t make any financial sense to go on the road.”
Huggins related a story about how difficult it was trying to schedule home games at Akron.
“I called (former Louisville coach) Denny Crum and I asked him if we could play a home and home or a two for one,” Huggins recalled. “Denny explained to me, ‘Huggs we put 19,000 people in here and that’s a pretty good number. I can’t afford to go on the road – it’s not that I don’t want to come to Akron and play you – I can’t financially afford to. When you get into that situation like I’ve been the last 17 or 18 years you schedule accordingly.”
Briefly:
“No surgery was needed,” said Messerly.
That will continue under Bob Huggins this year when West Virginia travels to the Big Apple to face St. John’s to end the regular season on March 8. St. John’s is playing four of its nine Big East home games at its on-campus facility with Pitt, Georgetown, Villanova, Marquette and West Virginia each playing at Madison Square Garden.
Five of West Virginia’s nine Big East road games will be played at off-campus facilities including the Hartford Civic Center against Connecticut – the first time Connecticut has opted to move the West Virginia game off campus.
