WVU Opens Against Elon
November 14, 2008 05:57 PM | General
November 14, 2008
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| Bob Huggins |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia coach Bob Huggins was searching for some improvement from his basketball team this week. The Mountaineers defeated Mountain State 98-78 last Saturday night, but the game was a lot closer than the score indicated.
At one point Mountain State trailed West Virginia by just 10 points.
Huggins was disappointed afterward that his team didn’t bury Mountain State when it had the chance, leading 20-2 to start the game before letting them back in it. During practice this week Huggins saw some improvement.
“I think we’re better defensively and I think we’re better offensively. Mountain State kind of jammed it up and we didn’t get the back cuts and the curls that we normally get but we had wide open looks,” Huggins said. “It’s just hard to take everything away when you have the kind of ball movement that we have and the way people move the way our guys move.”
Elon begins a stretch of six games in 14 days for the Mountaineers.
“I think we need to play,” Huggins said. “You guard the same guys every day. I think it’s good that we’re getting different things to guard: different sets, different looks and different people. It’s just going to make us better. You look at what we’ve got coming I think everyone realizes that after we have the home stand we go to Vegas and play the people we play there.
“Ole Miss is probably going to be undefeated when we go in there. Miami, Ohio just loses last night by four to UCLA. They are picked to win the MAC. Cleveland State is picked to win their league,” Huggins said. “I think we’ll find out a lot about ourselves.”
Huggins believes Elon, which upset its way to the Southern Conference championship game last year before falling to Davidson, will present a serious challenge Saturday night.
“Ernie (Nestor) does a great job of coaching them,” Huggins said. “When you walk away people will say that’s a very well coached team. They run their sets and they run their sets really well and they play to their strengths.
“Their big guys don’t go out on the floor and shoot shots that they can’t make and they have some bigs that can make shots. The bigs that can make shots, it’s more pick and pop where their other guys it’s more pick and roll. They keep the ball in the hands of the guys who can make plays,” he said.
West Virginia has never met Elon in basketball. Tip off is set for 7 pm and the game will be available to watch online through MSNsportsNET.com for just $7.95.
Briefly:
“We don’t post deep enough and he’s never really played down there,” Huggins said. “Some guys go too fast. He goes a little too slow. He’s going to have to make a decision a little bit quicker because they’re running people at him. I think it’s going to be an effective deal for us.”
“We want him to penetrate. He’s not Darris (Nichols). He’s going to make some mistakes but he’s going to make a lot of things happen, too,” Huggins said. “We want him to make things happen. We’ve got to get him a little bit better at understanding when to go and when not to go. He drove it into the teeth of the defense and there really wasn’t anything there. It’s just going to take some time.”
Huggins says the difference between Joe Mazzulla and Darris Nichols is that Mazzulla is going to get to the basket a little better than Nichols did.
“Joe is going to put more pressure on the rim. Darris at the end of the day may be a little bit more of a consistent perimeter shooter and was not going to take the chances that Joe takes,” Huggins said. “You can’t argue with the career that Darris has had and I think Joe is going to have a very similar career in terms of success.”
“It’s kind of been brought to my attention that I’ve been pointing fingers at somebody and I wasn’t doing that,” Huggins said. “You want to get things done faster than what probably sometimes they can be done but certainly faster than what the bureaucracy allows you to do. It wasn’t anything about anybody. It wasn’t supposed to come out like that. I’m not saying I didn’t say it. I just didn’t articulate very well what I meant.”
Huggins does not believe the present state of the economy will impact the progress being made on the practice facility.
“What hurts is I don’t have the time,” he explained. “My day job takes up quite a bit of my time. It’s hard to be able to get around the way that I would like to be able to get around.
“People are wonderful. I can’t say enough about how willing people have been to step up and help us and there’s a lot more out there that we’re counting on that I know are going to step up and help us,” Huggins said. “We haven’t finished culminating the deal but it’s going to happen. I don’t have any reservations whatsoever.”
