Basketball Notebook
November 20, 2008 05:12 PM | General
November 20, 2008
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| Bob Huggins |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia’s game tonight against Longwood is actually part of the Las Vegas Invitational that will comprise four games in three different cites over the next week and a half.
After Longwood, the Mountaineers will take on Delaware State at the Charleston Civic Center on Tuesday night before flying out to Las Vegas to take on Iowa on Saturday, Nov. 28. West Virginia finishes the tournament on Sunday against either Kansas State or Kentucky.
Huggins likes this format because it guarantees his team four games.
“It’s a format that makes sense,” Huggins said. “First of all, it makes sense financially for the people that put it on. If you’re Longwood, Oakland and Delaware State you get to go to Vegas. Basically what happens is they play during the day and we play during the evening.
“This gives schools like us a chance to play good competition on a neutral floor,” Huggins said.
Huggins said he has taken several teams to this particular tournament through the years and believes it is a first-class event.
“It’s a great tournament and it’s a great field. This is probably the fifth or sixth time I’ve played in it. It’s in a great venue now,” Huggins said. “When we first started doing it we were playing in a high school gym. Now the venue is great. We’re going to have fans there. Kentucky is going to have a bunch of fans there. Kansas State is going to have a bunch of fans there and Iowa is going to have a lot of fans there. I think it’s going to be a great atmosphere and the quality of competition is really good.
“The last three or four years their final four teams have been as good as anybody,” Huggins said.
Briefly:
“With us RPI is not going to be a problem,” he said. “If you look at our schedule from Longwood and Delaware State on we don’t have RPI issues. Being in this league you are certainly not going to have RPI issues. It gives people something to talk about that doesn’t have something to talk about. What are they going to talk about? They can’t talk about screen and roll. They don’t know what it is so they have to talk about something else.”
“We need to work on our post defense and everybody’s ball screening. We need to continue to work on ball screens and continue to work on guarding the ball and to try and add more to our offensive package,” Huggins said. “We haven’t really worked much on zone and we’ve worked a little on zone offense because I think we’re going to see some zone the next few games.”
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| Darryl Bryant |
“I can see Da’Sean and Alex out at guard, too,” he said. “We’re just going to do what the situation calls for and a lot of times a year ago we actually played Darris (Nichols), Alex and Joe together. That’s not out of the realm of possibility either. It depends on match ups. We’re just trying to figure out how to win.”
Huggins said he is beginning to see signs that Bryant is beginning to pick things up.
“Truck is a good player. It was a matter of when he catches on,” Huggins said. “I watched him in shoot around and his mechanics and his footwork were so much better than what they had been in practice. It’s a matter of concentration. These guys that go out here for three hours as hard as we go … their heads are spinning and they don’t understand why.
“The older guys know it’s a part of the whole. When you start breaking down parts (the younger players) kind of lose the whole,” Huggins said. “When you get to play games and they see what happens then they appreciate the whole part more.”
“It’s hard to argue that you wouldn’t want to have a guy like Darris because his assist-to-turnover ratio is phenomenal. But it’s kind of good to know when the clock is running down you’ve got guys out there that can make a play,” Huggins said. “Joe is very good at getting it to the goal and drawing fouls and Truck is going to be the same way. It’s a matter right now of confidence for him.”
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| Da'Sean Butler |
“We haven’t run anything for him. We basically just ran motion and our younger guys haven’t figured out what’s supposed to happen,” Huggins said. “I think when that happens he’s going to get just as many touches and just as many shots.
“That’s when you run a set or iso him in a certain area. If you want to play off the bounce or play off the post or run him off the screen you can do that with sets. That’s what we did with Joe (Alexander) a year ago,” Huggins said. “The hope is to just run motion so you’re not as easy to scout and it comes in the flow of what you’re doing. That doesn’t always happen and that’s why you have to have some sets.
“Da’Sean has probably been the most versatile guy we’ve had the last two years.”
