Mountaineers to Battle VMI in Charleston
November 25, 2014 03:56 PM | General
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| Freshman guard Jevon Carter is coming off a 15-point performance in a recent win against Boston College in the Puerto Rico Tipoff. |
| All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - How do you slow down a team that wants to play as fast as VMI does? According to West Virginia coach Bob Huggins, make them play even faster.
“We’ve just got to contain them a little bit,” Huggins said before the team’s workout at the Charleston Civic Center earlier today. “They play fast on their own so if you can try and make it a little harder for them to get the ball in bounds it may slow them down a little bit.
If you are looking for some entertaining, up-and-down basketball with lots of scoring then the Charleston Civic Center is where you want to be on Wednesday night.
Few teams in college basketball play as fast as VMI, the Keydets regularly ranking among the top scoring teams in the country under 10th-year coach Duggar Baucom, and this style of play helped VMI win 22 games last season and make an eight-game improvement in the win column in just a year’s time.
VMI (2-2) has already broken 100 points once this year in an 82-point victory over Johnson University, and the Keydets also scored 92 in a six-point win over Army.
Six-foot guard Q.J. Peterson is one of three starters averaging double figures at 22.5 points per game. Last year Peterson burst onto the scene as a freshman to average 19.0 points per game as the team’s second-leading scorer.
The Keydets will also look for points from 5-11 guard Brian Brown, who averages 11.8 points per game.
“They’re different – they’re really different,” said Huggins.
No. 21-rated West Virginia (5-0) is coming off an impressive showing in the 2014 Puerto Rico Tipoff in San Juan last weekend where the Mountaineers defeated George Mason, Boston College and Connecticut to make a return to college basketball’s top 25 for the first time in three years.
Guard Juwan Staten was named tournament MVP after scoring 21 points in West Virginia’s 10-point victory over then-17th-ranked Connecticut in the championship game.
Staten leads a very balanced WVU attack with an average of 15.8 points per game. Double-double machine Devin Williams is averaging 13.6 points and 9.2 rebounds per game, while junior Jonathan Holton is fitting in nicely at the other forward spot with averages of 11.2 points and 7.8 rebounds per contest.
West Virginia’s 40-minute, baseline-to-baseline pressure created a Puerto Rico Tipoff record 37 steals over the weekend and the Mountaineers come into Wednesday night’s game with 59 steals in just five games, causing 108 turnovers. Despite that, there are still plenty of things Huggins says his young team can clean up defensively.
“We’ve got to quit giving up easy baskets,” he said. “Our field goal percentage defense is way too high – and it’s going to be high because of the way we are playing – but it’s higher than it needs to be. We haven’t rebounded very well on the defensive backboards. We did a great job on the offensive glass but we haven’t done a very good job on the defensive glass.”
Wednesday night’s game will be televised locally by West Virginia Media (Robby Incmikoski, Warren Baker and Amanda Mazey) while the Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG (Tony Caridi and Jay Jacobs) will describe the game on radio stations throughout West Virginia.
A live stream of the Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG’s radio coverage can also be accessed through WVUsports.com via leanStream.
Tipoff is set for 7:30 p.m.
Following Wednesday night’s VMI game, West Virginia has another quick turnaround with Saturday’s game against College of Charleston at the WVU Coliseum.
“(The games) are coming so fast that we’re just worried about taking care of business,” said Huggins.
The work continues Wednesday night.
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