Preseason Practice Opens for WVU Men
October 03, 2014 07:50 AM | General
|
||||||||||
West Virginia coach Bob Huggins is getting around a lot better these days, thanks to the new hip he received earlier this summer that has all but eradicated the pain he endured last season.
“Honestly, my leg would get to the point where I just had to drag it so I probably wasn’t as active as I had been prior to that,” the veteran coach said earlier this week. “Now I feel great. This is the best I’ve felt in a long time.”
It’s a good thing that Huggins is once again up and at ‘em because he’s got a basketball team that should be pretty active this season.
Although Huggins won’t put this year’s team in the class of some of those great athletic teams that he once had at Cincinnati, he does believe this year’s group could be the most athletic of the eight that he’s had at West Virginia, including the 2010 Final Four team.
“In 2010 we were fairly athletic,” Huggins said. “Overall, maybe we are more athletic than that team.”
When you think back to those powerhouse teams Huggins had at Cincinnati, he always had an explosive point guard who could get to the rim and he always had two or three guys who could jump over the rim and rebound-dunk missed shots.
“We scored,” said Huggins. “We scored off of our defense. We offensive rebounded the ball. We threw it close and we did a lot of things.”
That’s obviously not something you could say about Huggins’ recent West Virginia teams, especially his last two since the Mountaineers joined the Big 12.
Last year, he did have the explosive playmaker at point guard - arguably the best one in the country in Juwan Staten, who yesterday was named the Big 12’s preseason player of the year - but the Mountaineers really struggled to guard teams on the perimeter and they didn’t have a reliable scorer to throw the ball to close to the basket.
That is likely going to change this year.
Huggins finally has some big pieces to go around Staten in 6-foot-9-inch, 255-pound sophomore Devin Williams, 6-foot-9-inch, 245-pound sophomore Brandon Watkins, 6-foot-9-inch, 235-pound sophomore Nathan Adrian and two other solid bigs who sat out last year - athletic 6-foot-7-inch, 220-pound junior forward Jonathan Holton and 6-foot-9-inch, 240-pound freshman Elijah Macon (A sixth big, Kevin Noreen, will be available in January following offseason surgery).
Those five available guys give Huggins far more flexibility in the paint than he’s had since probably his 2010 team with Devin Ebanks, Wellington Smith, John Flowers and Kevin Jones.
“I hope we can get back to where we can guard people and where we can rebound the ball,” noted Huggins. “I think if you can’t do that it makes it hard. It makes it hard to stop other people’s runs if you can’t stop anybody and if you can’t get second shots.”
Guarding the other team and getting second-shot opportunities have clearly been the two most glaring weaknesses for West Virginia since the Mountaineers joined the Big 12 three seasons ago. In that span, West Virginia is six games under .500 in conference play and has really struggled against some of the better teams in the league despite averaging more than 77 points per game last year.
“Basketball is a game of runs and you’ve got to be able to control runs and it’s hard to control them if you can’t stop anybody,” said Huggins. “Some days you make a lot of shots and some days you don’t make many.”
When West Virginia made them last year it could play with anybody and when the Mountaineers didn’t they usually lost.
Now, with the departures of guards Eron Harris to Michigan State and Terry Henderson to NC State, West Virginia likely won’t be as explosive offensively because those two players were noted scorers and shooters, but Huggins thinks this year’s team can make up for what it lost from those two in other ways.
“As long as you score more than the other team it really doesn’t matter how you do it,” he explained. “We’re probably not going to make as many 3s and we probably won’t shoot it as well from 3, but we’ll pass it better, we’ll guard better and we’ll rebound better - which I think more than makes up for that.”
Huggins also believes his team can be better offensively, even if it scores fewer points than it did last season.
“I think we can be way more efficient,” he said. “(Other teams) just came down and got really good shots. Our time of possession was (usually) pretty short.”
The two guys replacing Harris and Henderson, junior college guards Tarik Phillip and Jaysean Paige, get high marks from Huggins for their athleticism and defensive capabilities. In Phillip in particular, Huggins believes he has a player who can create offense by the way he plays defense.
“He’s longer than you think he is. He’s quicker than you think he is and he anticipates things really well,” said Huggins.
West Virginia’s two young guards, Daxter Miles Jr. and Jevon Carter, have caught Huggins’ eye, too.
“They’re farther ahead than some other freshmen would be, I think,” he said. “And they’re willing and that’s a big part of it. You’ve got to be willing to do those things.”
BillyDee Williams, a 6-foot-6-inch swing guy from South Plains Community College, was a late addition to the roster. He provides additional athleticism out on the wing.
How it all shakes out this year is still to be determined and right now, Huggins isn't sure which five will be on the floor at the same time.
“We sit there and I walk around and ask (his assistants), who would you start? They rarely give me the same five guys. Everybody says Wanny every time, and Devin, but it changes,” said Huggins. “Can we play Jonathan Holton at small forward? I don’t know. Can we play Nate there? I don’t know, maybe.
“Will we play three guards? I don’t know. It may depend on situations in games. If you play Nate and Jonathan Holton at three with any two of those other (bigs) you’re pretty big and pretty long,” said Huggins. “If you play Tarik at a guard spot you’ve got great length, but you’re probably not as good on offense. It will depend upon situations, but I think that’s a good thing.”
The process to finding out some of those answers begins today with the start of preseason practice. Stay tuned.
2026 Mountaineer Invitational Preview
Thursday, April 09
Nate Gabriel | April 8
Thursday, April 09
Coach Rich Rodriguez | April 8
Thursday, April 09
Coach Rod West | April 8
Thursday, April 09
