Stretch Run
February 14, 2008 10:30 AM | General
February 14, 2008
GAME NOTES
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Normally West Virginia coach Bob Huggins isn’t a big fan of having a week off right in the middle of the basketball season but considering the health of his team, the downtime may have done them some good.
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| West Virginia's Cam Thoroughman (2) and University of Pittsburgh's Tyrell Biggs fight for a loose ball in the first half of the basketball game in Pittsburgh,Thursday, Feb. 7, 2008.
AP photo |
“We’re beat up and we’ve been beat up,” Huggins said Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve had a lot of guys playing heavy minutes. My hope is that this helps us.”
Huggins chose to give the team Friday and Saturday off after the team’s tough, one-point loss at Pitt last Thursday night. The Mountaineers also went light on Sunday and had another day off on Monday.
“I thought Sunday was very good and I thought (Tuesday) we got a lot of things done,” Huggins said. “At the end of practice we probably did more explaining and talking than we did playing. They were attentive.”
Huggins said his biggest concern right now is finding a way to be more productive offensively. West Virginia has struggled to score in three of its last four conference games, putting up 57 in a one-point loss to Georgetown, 39 in a 23-point home loss to Cincinnati and 54 in a one-point road loss at Pitt.
“We’ve been working on trying to score,” Huggins said. “I thought it might be a novel idea to try and score a couple of goals. We’ve spent a lot of time on half-court offense.”
Another area Huggins and his coaches are trying to clean up is free throw shooting. The Mountaineers were just 7 of 17 from the line at Pitt last Thursday night with several misses coming at key times in the game.
“We’ve shot a bunch but I think the hard thing to do is to simulate shooting under pressure and shooting it when you’re tired,” Huggins said. “We can shoot it when we’re tired in practice but it’s hard to simulate going to the free throw line being up one and knowing you need to make both of them.”
While West Virginia (16-7, 5-5) has struggled to score points, its defense has kept the Mountaineers in games. WVU is allowing just 60.6 points per game and its opponents to shoot 40.3 percent from the floor. Only twice this season has West Virginia allowed an opponent to score more than 70 points in a game.
“I think our defense has enabled us to be in every game as poorly as we’ve shot the ball,” Huggins said. “If I would have told you we were going to shoot 41 percent from the foul line and 35 percent from the floor and we were going to get out rebounded and had a chance to win the game at Pitt you would say I was crazy.
“We’ve let a couple get away but we’ve virtually been in every game other than Cincinnati,” Huggins said. “We’ve been in games because we’ve done a good job in half court defense. We’ve just got to start shooting the ball in and we’ve had opportunities. We’ve had shots - we just haven’t made the shots that we’re capable of making.”
Huggins hopes a well-rested team will find its shooting touch tonight against a 10-15 Rutgers team that has won twice in conference play this year, including a 13-point road win at Pitt on Jan. 26. Two of Rutgers’ 10 Big East losses have come in overtime.
“They’re good,” Huggins said. “They’ve got all of their team back now. They lost some kids early and they didn’t have a lot of their key players.”
If West Virginia has any hopes of reaching the NCAA tournament it is most likely going to have to win the vast majority of its eight remaining regular season games starting with tonight’s home game against Rutgers.
ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi still has the Mountaineers in the tournament as a 12 seed and Jerry Palm of CollegeRPI.com has West Virginia rated 43rd today, but Huggins concedes the margin of error for his team is narrowing.
“They understand what is ahead of us and what we’ve got to do,” Huggins said.
Tip off for tonight’s game is 7 pm. The contest will be televised nationally on ESPN2 (Dave Pasch and Len Elmore). MSN’s pre-game coverage begins at 6:30 pm with the Mountaineers Today. Sirius Satellite Radio subscribers can access the MSN broadcast on channel 127. Internet listeners can get the live game audio through CSTV All-Access.
Briefly:
“I think in the end what it comes down to is that they know you care about them and that you did what was in their best interests,” Huggins said. “For thirty years that’s kind of been the case with me.”
Huggins understands, too, that because he is so demonstrative on the court that it makes for good television.
“I asked them when we played Texas Tech on Big Monday will they have enough cameras because I know they’re going to have one on me and one on Coach Knight,” Huggins joked. “I didn’t know if we had enough space for all those cameras.”
Is it bad shooting or good defense?
Bob Huggins has another explanation.
“The floor has gotten smaller because the players have gotten so much bigger,” he said. “They’re so much longer and they’re so much more athletic than they’ve ever been. I can remember years here when I played that a 6-foot-6 kid was the center. We’ve got a 6-foot-6 guy that’s a two-guard.
“When you cover more ground it makes it much more difficult to get stand-still jump shots,” Huggins said. “You don’t have time to stand there and shoot it. You’re shooting it a little quicker than what you want to and you are shooting it a little higher than you want to. That’s what makes it much more difficult to score.”
Huggins points out that technology has also had a big impact on scoring.
“You have tape on just about every game your opponent has played so every game you play there aren’t any surprises,” Huggins said.
