Campus Connection: Staten Wants More Wins
November 07, 2014 08:46 AM | General
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| Big 12 preseason player of the Juwan Staten is seeking more wins for the Mountaineers in 2015. |
| All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
If Bob Huggins is going to get out of basketball purgatory (for him that means his teams not reaching the NCAA tournament) then he’s going to have to rely on one of the smallest guys on the floor to get him out of there.
Nobody in the Big 12 played more minutes or accumulated more bruises than 6-foot-1-inch, 190-pound Juwan Staten, who just might be the best point guard in the country this season.
You won’t get any arguments from his coach, who has a pretty good track record through the years of producing good point guards; and good shooting guards; and good small forwards; and good power forwards; and good centers.
Where Staten ranks among Huggins’ best is yet to be determined, but based on last year’s performance – 18.1 points, 5.9 assists, and, get this, nearly six rebounds per game – he’s well on his way to joining the discussion.
In fact, Staten was so valuable to Huggins last season that he couldn’t take him off the floor, and usually didn’t.
Staten’s 37.3 minutes per game easily led the Big 12, and while there were 14 players in college basketball last year who averaged more minutes per game than Staten, nearly all of them either weren’t playing in one of the Power 5 conferences or were playing in systems that allowed them to do so.
Staten didn’t and couldn’t. That’s one thing Huggins says he would like to change this season.
“I think he wore down a little bit at the end of the year playing all of those minutes,” Huggins said last month during Big 12 media day in Kansas City. “I’d like to be able to rest him some more, have him fresher at the end of games.”
Those heavy minutes Staten played in 2014 were certainly good for the stat line, though. He became the first player in more than 100 years of West Virginia basketball to score 500 points (598), grab 150 rebounds (186) and dish out 150 assists (193) in the same season, a pretty nifty little stat right there.
He averaged nearly 20 points per game in conference play, shot almost 50 percent from the floor, scored a season-high 35 in a nice win over Kansas State, scored 46 points in two regular season games against Kansas and was at or near the top of every major statistical category in the conference last season.
He can do half of that this year and still have one hell of year. That’s how good he was last season.
“Juwan Staten is a beast,” tweeted ESPN college basketball analyst Fran Fraschilla last spring. “There are very few point guards in the country that I’d take over him – even the ‘big name’ guys.”
Today, Staten is now one of those “big name” guys.
Earlier this fall, league coaches chose him as the Big 12 Preseason Player of the Year, believed to be a first among men’s basketball players at WVU. That is no small feat considering how difficult it can be at times for Mountaineer players to get good pub – even today in the Internet age.
Back in the day, when Jerry West was playing for the Mountaineers, sports information director Eddie Barrett did practically everything he could think of (including begging) to try and get Sports Illustrated’s Jeremiah Tax to come down to Morgantown to profile West like he did Cincinnati guard Oscar Robertson and some of the game's other great players of the day.
No dice, not even for the player who turned out to be the NBA logo.
Think about that for a minute when you consider the ramifications of Staten being named the Big 12’s preseason player of the year. It was a nod to the great season Staten had in 2014, and a genuine display of respect for the type of player he has become.
Now, for Staten to build on that and get even more attention for himself and the Mountaineer program in 2015 then his team is going to have win more games than it has the last two years … a lot more, and he knows that.
“The first thing we can do is win more games,” Staten said the other day when asked what else he can accomplish as a college player. “I’m not really concerned with my personal accolades; I want to get the team better. I want to do something, which I haven’t done personally, which is play in the NCAA tournament. That’s my main focus and I want to do everything I can to help the team get there.”
All indications are this year’s team is more in line with the teams college basketball fans have grown accustomed to seeing from Bob Huggins – athletic, aggressive, relentless, in-your-face guys who play all 40 minutes of every game like it’s the last 40 minutes of their lives.
That’s clearly one of the things missing around here the last couple of years and it’s something Huggins has made a point of emphasizing during preseason practice this fall.
“We’ve spent a lot of time trying to explain to them that it’s hard to coach effort and basketball at the same time,” he said. “If you’re constantly coaching effort, you don’t coach a lot of basketball.”
Or win a lot of games.
“Our guys are very competitive this year,” admitted Staten. “I would say we are more competitive than we’ve been in the past and I would say that’s one factor that will help us a lot. I think we have better athletes and better natural players and I feel like that will help us in some situations that we struggled with last year.”
Specifically, stopping the other team.
Because of the unusual roster turnover West Virginia experienced last spring, Staten is one of only a handful of veteran players on this year’s team and he’s got to be a leader on the floor and in the locker room at all times.
Basketball is unique in that there are only 15 players on a team and they are around each other all of the time, meaning good chemistry is crucial to having a good team. You can have bad players and still have a good team, but it’s impossible to have a good team with good players and bad chemistry. And having just one bad apple is all you need to ruin the entire basket.
“Chemistry definitely helps,” said Staten. “When you know somebody on and off the court it helps you understand everyone better and it all meshes well when you have good chemistry.”
To help that along, Staten said he is speaking his mind and encouraging the younger players when he has to - on and off the floor.
“It’s the coaches’ primary job to do the yelling, so I try to come in and give an extra voice or just tell them another way to look at it and try and encourage them a little bit more, especially with the guards to try and stay in their ear because they are going to be handling the ball a lot,” he said.
Besides the guards, another player Staten has spent a lot of time with is sophomore forward Devin Williams. One, because Williams was put in a difficult situation last year of being WVU’s No. 1 inside option as a freshman when he wasn’t totally ready to assume that role, and, two, because he’s got a chance of becoming a really good player.
Williams averaged 8.4 points and 7.6 rebounds per game and had some good games down the stretch last season, but Staten believes he’s only scratched the surface as a player.
“Dev has been great,” said Staten. “He’s definitely been making his home in the paint and that’s something we definitely need him to do this year and he’s been leading and stepping up – talking a lot to the guys, especially the bigs that had to sit out last year. He’s more vocal and maturing a lot.”
Staten says the new guys - Jonathan Holton and Elijah Macon - will help Williams in the paint as well.
“Jon and Elijah will be impact players from the start,” Staten predicts. “They give us a lot of stuff that we didn’t have last year. They’re both competitors; they play hard and they have a lot of skill. I think they will definitely complement Dev down there.”
In sum, this year’s team may not shoot the ball as well as last year’s, or score as many points, but it could be much better in the other important areas that are required to win basketball games.
And right at the top of the list is playing your hardest all of the time.
“That’s the hard part right there … giving it your all,” said Staten. “As long as you play hard everything else will fall in place.”
Indeed, perhaps even some well-deserved hardware falling Mr. Staten’s way at the end of the year, along with a trip back to the NCAA tournament for his old ball coach.
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