The beauty of college basketball is a team can stub its toe early in the year, fix the problem and be perfectly fine at the end of the season come tournament time.

 

Bob Huggins has been through this many times before, with one exception - when his teams stub their toe early in the year they usually somehow still find a way to win the game.

 

That obviously didn’t happen last Friday afternoon in Brooklyn, New York, when West Virginia trailed Temple by 20 at halftime, fought back to take the lead with 10 minutes remaining but couldn’t make the critical plays required to win the game at the end before falling, 81-77.

 

But there were valuable lessons learned.

 

“I’m not sure we can screw it up any more than we did,” Huggins said on Sunday. “We forced 19 turnovers, which is what we’re supposed to do, but then we turn it over ourselves. We obviously didn’t shoot it very well. Everybody is going to have games when they don’t shoot it very well. They shot it really well and we didn’t, so it was going to be hard enough without turning it over as many times as we turned it over.”

 

Huggins continued.

 

“We didn’t do a very good job of guarding. We fouled too much at the wrong times. It was sort of a comedy of errors and I’m not sure we can do all those things in the same day - I hope we can’t,” he said.

 

Because Huggins is working in so many new players, some of that inexperience showed up when the Mountaineers were required to run half-court offense.

 

That’s why he had to shorten his bench and play his most experienced guys on Friday against Temple.

 

“I think our young guys are going to get better, they always have. Lamont (West) is going to get better. Sags (Sagaba Konate) is going to get better. Beetle (James Bolden) is going to get better. Magic (Maciej Bender) is going to get better but there is a lot of stuff you have to get ready for.

 

“There are a variety of zones. People may play 1-3-1, they may play 1-2-2, they may play 3-2, they may play 1-1-3, they may play 2-3 and the areas that you want to attack are different, normally. That’s hard for them,” Huggins explained. “Then everybody plays different man to man. Are they going to come out and try and get you? Is it about ball pressure? Is it pack line? Do they front the post? Do they play behind the post? Do they side the post?

 

“There are a lot of different things that you try to get those guys to understand and react accordingly. To this point, the young guys have a hard time with that. In reality, Elijah (Macon) and Brandon (Watkins) haven’t played that much. Nate (Adrian) has played a lot more, so we try and run as much as we possibly can through Nate because he does understand.”

 

What Temple basically did on Friday was leave West Virginia’s five-man unguarded and sag back and help on the other four players.

 

It’s not quite what West Virginia will see when it faces Virginia’s pack-line defense this weekend, but it did require the Mountaineers to pass the basketball, be patient and make open shots, which, obviously, they didn’t do against the Owls.

 

WVU will see zone tonight against Manhattan and then Tony Bennett’s unorthodox defense on Saturday in Charlottesville, meaning West Virginia is going to have to get better at running half-court offense - immediately.

 

“The innovator of the pack-line was Dick Bennett, who was Tony’s father,” Huggins said. “Obviously, if there is a guy who knows pack-line any better than Tony I certainly don’t know who it is.”

 

The pack line is basically a sagging man-to-man defense with one exception -  instead of the off-ball defenders extending out to deny passes, everyone except the player guarding the basketball must be inside an imaginary line 16 feet from the rim.

 

At all times one defender must be pressuring the ball with the other four players occupying gaps to provide help to stop dribble-drives to the basket. Once the dribbler picks up the ball then the other defenders are permitted to leave the pack-line and go out and deny passes and look for steals.

 

Teams must be able to pass the basketball, exhibit patience and make open shots to be effective against this defense.

 

It will be interesting to see how much improvement the Mountaineers show in the coming days running precise, half-court sets.

 

Briefly:

 

* One bright spot for West Virginia during last Saturday’s four-point loss to Temple was the play of sophomore Esa Ahmad, who scored a career-high 19 points on eight-of-13 shooting, while also grabbing six rebounds and handing out three assists.

 

Huggins has talked about Ahmad playing with his motor revved up and that appeared to be the case, particularly in the second half against the Owls.

 

“He’s a talented guy,” Huggins said. “We tried to iso him a little bit more than what we have before. We couldn’t make a shot so you’ve got to try and find ways to score and I thought our best option was the mismatch that we had and the one we were going to try and exploit was him.”

 

* Huggins was asked Sunday to evaluate his post play after five games so far this year.

 

“It’s not near as much as we need to do,” he said. “We need to rebound it better. You are going to have days when you don’t make shots and sometimes when both teams don’t make shots, the team that wins is the one who gets the most possessions, and you do that by turning people over and rebounding the ball.

 

“We’ve got to do a better job of rebounding it and we’ve got to do a better job of, one, throwing it in there and, two, finishing when we do throw it in there.”

 

* Junior guard Daxter Miles Jr. returned to the floor on Thanksgiving Day against Illinois and scored 8 points in 17 minutes of action. He played 20 minutes against Temple and scored just three points.

 

 “He’s starting to gain his weight back,” Huggins said. “The biggest thing is just his conditioning.”

 

* Huggins said Saturday the team reviewed the tape to go over all of the mistakes it made against Temple and then worked on fixing them on Sunday.

 

“Look at it on film and they get to see what everybody else sees … because when you’re out there you don’t see all that stuff. Now seeing it on film I think that helps,” Huggins said. “Hopefully we get it figured out.”

 

* And finally, as for tonight’s game against 2-3 Manhattan, Huggins expects to see a lot of zone defense and a style similar to the way Louisville plays.

 

“They’re well coached,” Huggins said of Jaspers coach Steve Masiello. “He played for Rick (Pitino) and he coached under Rick at Louisville and a lot of what they do is what Rick has done over the years. They’re going to play a lot of zone and they will extend the zone. They haven’t full-court pressed as much, but they have three-quarter-court pressed back into the zone and I’m sure that’s what they will do - try and slow us down.”

 

A 7 p.m. tip is scheduled for tonight’s game and it will be televised locally on ROOT SPORTS. The Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG’s coverage will begin at 6 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia and online via leanStream and the mobile app TuneIn.