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Young Team Could Mean Continued Hoop Success
February 13, 2017 12:12 PM | Men's Basketball
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - We still have a month to go before Selection Sunday, but already West Virginia has received a wink and a nod from the NCAA Tournament selection committee.
For the first-time ever, the committee on Saturday released the top 16 seeds in an early version of its bracket. West Virginia, despite an RPI that has consistently hovered in the 30s, is among the 16 seeded teams revealed last weekend on the basis of its two home victories against Baylor and Kansas, and an early December road win at Virginia.
That’s certainly good news for the now No. 9 Mountaineers, which face No. 3 Kansas tonight in Lawrence.
Here’s more good news: comparatively speaking, 20-5 West Virginia is still a relatively young basketball team.
Yes, there are some older players having outstanding seasons in 2017.
Senior Nathan Adrian is having an all-conference type year, averaging 10.8 points and 6.4 rebounds per game, while senior Tarik Phillip continues to give the Mountaineers across-the-board production once again.
Seniors Teyvon Myers, Brandon Watkins and James Long have also provided important contributions coming off the bench, but the Mountaineers have a number of underclassmen making equally important contributions.
Junior guard Jevon Carter is perhaps the best defensive guard in the Big 12 this season, and he has now taken over the team lead in scoring with an average of 11.8 points per game.
Sophomore forward Esa Ahmad is right behind Carter, averaging 11.6 points per contest. He continues to tease us with flashes of brilliance, like his 27-point, five-rebound effort against No. 2-ranked Kansas, or all of those tomahawk dunks he had in a recent road win at Iowa State.
Juniors Daxter Miles Jr. and Elijah Macon continue to provide the Mountaineers with valuable minutes, experience and moxie on the floor.
And then there are the freshmen - three of them specifically - that continue to make the games interesting and entertaining to watch this year.
It’s way too early to call them “Young Guns” or “The New Kids on the Court,” but they do make things happen when they do get on the court.
Freshman forward Lamont West is averaging 6.1 points and 2.1 rebounds per game. All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo
We saw what 6-8 forward Lamont West is capable of earlier this year when he stepped in and hit a couple of big 3s in West Virginia’s 66-57 victory at Virginia.
Three weeks later, he made all three 3s he attempted at Oklahoma State in a 92-75 victory, scored 10 in an overtime loss at Texas Tech and contributed a season-high 21 points in West Virginia’s recent home loss to the Cowboys.
Diminutive James “Beetle” Bolden is quickly becoming a fan favorite for his ability to come into games and quickly light up the scoreboard. He maximized his 10 minutes of court time at Oklahoma by scoring 17 points - 15 of those coming in the first half when West Virginia was struggling to score - and he followed that up with nine points in just eight minutes of work in last Saturday’s win over Kansas State.
Bolden is averaging more than a point-a-minute in conference play this year, the point guard scoring an amazing 37 points in only 29 minutes of Big 12 action.
Then there is freshman forward Sagaba Konate, who continues to demonstrate the value of having open borders.
The Bamako, Mali, native takes another step every time he walks onto the court, giving West Virginia a rim-protecting presence it hasn’t had in the 10 seasons Bob Huggins has coached his alma mater.
Konate scored 12 points in just 13 minutes in the Oklahoma State win, had 13 points and eight boards in a home win against TCU, scored eight points and grabbed four rebounds in the Kansas victory and blocked five shots in a recent win at Oklahoma - West Virginia’s first since joining the Big 12 in 2012.
Konate has twice as many blocks (38) as the team’s next closest player, Ahmad, despite averaging less than 12 minutes per game. It’s difficult to accurately gauge how well Konate has performed this year because the coaches are still not sure what he knows and doesn’t know yet.
“Sags is tough because it’s still a challenge with the language to make sure he understands,” Huggins admitted last Friday. “He’s such a good kid. He acts like he understands whether he does or he doesn’t, so you don’t know whether he does or doesn’t.”
The instinctive play is not quite there for Konate, but the timing, the length, the explosiveness and the strength are certainly evident.
When the other things come - look out!
“He is a heck of a shot blocker. He’s probably the best I’ve had since Eric Hicks,” Huggins admitted, though quickly adding, “now he doesn’t go get it like Eric Hicks did.
“He’ll get better as his understanding gets better. He played two years at a small high school and stood in front of the rim and blocked everything. But he’s got a chance to be really special. He catches it. He’s got good hands. His shot is improved; it’s just trying to get him to understand the game that we want him to play.”
As for Bolden and West, their continued development hinges on their physical development. Both are not quite where they need to be physically to take on bigger roles. That will hopefully come with time and maturity.
Freshman James "Beetle" Bolden is quickly becoming a Mountaineer fan favorite. M.G. Ellis photo.
“Beetle went through what a lot of guys go through,” Huggins said. “He was hurt so that was a rough year for him and then he comes back and he’s excited. He scores in open gym and he’s playing and he’s like, ‘Man, I’m going to get some run here because I’m playing really well against these dudes and then all of a sudden it comes down to playing time and they really start playing.
“Then it’s, ‘These guys are bigger, they’re stronger, they’re faster’ and then you go through that period where you pout a little bit and then you kind of decide you’ve got to man up and that’s what he’s done.”
Huggins admitted last Friday that he’s now hunting for instances when he can put the three freshmen into the game.
“We put Lamont in against Virginia because they were pack-lining everything and we were getting penetrate and pitch and we weren’t making shots. I thought, ‘Here’s a guy who has been making shots in practice,’” Huggins said.
The next step for those three - as well as talented 6-10 freshman forward Maciej Bender, whose progress this year has been a little slower - is doing the other things they need to do in order to stay on the floor for longer stretches of time.
“That’s the next step with everybody, but particularly with them,” Huggins said. “You can’t make adjustments. That’s the difficult thing. You look and you see, ‘Well, I want to do this but what do I do with this guy? How do I get him out of the way (offensively)? How do I get his man out from the basket because I can’t throw him the ball?
“If you throw him the ball he kind of has to come out so what do you end up doing? You end up ball screening him. That’s the only way you can get that guy out from under the basket. But you still have him in the play. You kind of want to get him out of the play.”
One day, when they fully understand what’s going on, and are physically strong enough to handle what Big 12 basketball offers on a nightly basis, Huggins will want them involved in the plays.
That’s coming, and that’s more good news for Mountaineer basketball fans.
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