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Big Monday Notebook
February 20, 2017 01:01 PM | Men's Basketball
It’s another Saturday-Monday turnaround for West Virginia, the second of three for the Mountaineers this season.
The first Saturday-Monday was a Sunflower State split, WVU defeating Kansas State 85-66 in Morgantown before falling 84-80 in overtime at Kansas.
This time, it’s a Longhorn State double dip with Texas Tech already in the books following Saturday’s much-tougher-than-expected 83-74 double-OT win over the Red Raiders.
And now later tonight, West Virginia will take on the Texas team from Austin, which is a surprising 10-17 this year under second-year coach Shaka Smart.
The Longhorns are young - starting a pair of freshmen in guard Andrew Jones and forward Jarrett Allen, and a couple of sophomores in guards Kerwin Roach Jr. and Eric Davis Jr.
Smart also uses a couple of freshmen off the bench in guard Jacob Young and center James Banks, and where Texas’ youth and inexperience has really revealed itself is in tight games. Nine of the Longhorns’ 17 losses this year have been by a margin of five points or less, including West Virginia’s 74-72 victory in Austin back on January 14.
There are some teams that seem to match up well against others and for whatever reason, Texas has enjoyed considerable success against WVU since the Mountaineers joined the Big 12 in 2012.
Texas has won six out of the last eight against West Virginia, including both games last season - one of those a 56-49 triumph in Morgantown.
On paper, the 21-6 Mountaineers appear to be heavy favorites against Texas tonight, but those who have watched these two teams play the last three or four years know enough to cast a wary eye on the Longhorns, no matter what their record is.
“We’ve got to start making shots,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said following Saturday’s double-overtime win against Texas Tech. “It’s not like we’re not getting good shots. We ran that flex action and one, we didn’t deliver the ball the way we needed to deliver it and, two, when we did deliver the ball we didn’t finish very well.”
The final Saturday-Monday turnaround will happen next weekend when West Virginia plays at TCU on Saturday before traveling down to Waco for another Big Monday night matchup against Baylor - two extremely difficult games.
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The AP poll rollercoaster ride for West Virginia continues. A 1-1 record last week has the Mountaineers down three spots to No. 12 in this week’s polling of sportswriters.
Twice, West Virginia was ranked No. 7 on January 16 and again on January 30.
The USA Today Coaches’ Poll will come out later today.
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West Virginia recently accomplished its 31st 20-win season in school history, and its seventh in 10 years under current coach Bob Huggins. Huggs now shows 28 20-win seasons in 35 years as a collegiate head coach.
He has 16 seasons of 25 wins or more.
By the way, Huggins is 58-44 in Big 12 games, including a 48-38 record at WVU.
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Junior five-man Elijah Macon is coming off his best performance in a Mountaineer uniform on Saturday afternoon against Texas Tech. Macon scored 17 points on seven-of-eight shooting, including a stretch in the second half when he scored three straight times West Virginia was on offense.
Macon’s game-high 12 rebounds against Tech were a career best.
The Columbus, Ohio, resident is now averaging 5.4 points and 3.5 rebounds per contest.
When you combine Macon’s production with West Virginia’s other two post players, senior Brandon Watkins and freshman Sagaba Konate, the trio is giving the Mountaineers 15.5 points, 9.8 rebounds and 2.4 blocks per game.
Not too shabby.
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If you didn’t notice, West Virginia slipped in a little 1-3-1 zone defense late in the Texas Tech game after the Red Raiders were hitting better than 61 percent of their shot attempts through regulation.
In overtime, Tech’s hot shooting cooled considerably. Texas Tech made only two of 15 during the two overtime periods to finish at 48.2 percent.
“(The 1-3-1) kept them guessing a little bit,” Huggins said after the game.
Interestingly enough, while Texas is still primarily a man-to-man defensive team, the Longhorns do play a little 1-3-1 with 6-foot-11-inch freshman Jarrett Allen on top.
“That’s different when you’ve got a 6-11 guy at the top,” Huggins said. “He does a good job of stopping ball reversals.”
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West Virginia’s top four scorers in Big 12 games this year are junior guard Jevon Carter (13.8 ppg.), senior forward Nathan Adrian (10.9), senior guard Tarik Phillip (10.9) and sophomore forward Esa Ahmad (10.4).
The Mountaineers are averaging 80.6 points per game in league play this year, an improvement of nearly five points per game from last year’s 75.8 points-per-game average.
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Huggins said on his postgame radio show Saturday that he is still looking for a third rebounder, and he believes it could be 6-3 junior guard Daxter Miles Jr.
Miles Jr. is strong and athletic enough to be that guy. His rebounding numbers are not that eye-catching this year (2.1), but it was his two stick-back baskets in the second overtime against Texas Tech that were the difference in the game.
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A tweet put out by West Virginia men’s basketball official twitter account indicates the Mountaineers have already achieved a gross attendance record of 179,754 with tonight’s game against Texas and the regular season finale against Iowa State on Friday, March 3 still to be played.
The Mountaineers need to average 10,123 over their final two games to top 200,000 total fans for the first time in school history.
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West Virginia’s RPI heading into tonight’s game against Texas is 28, according to ESPN.com’s daily RPI.
However, WVU is No. 3 in this week’s ESPN.com BPI behind top-ranked Villanova and No. 2 North Carolina.
Interestingly, the BPI rates West Virginia’s strength of schedule 46th while the RPI has the Mountaineers’ schedule strength rated 76th.
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The Mountaineers still lead the country in turnover margin (9.3), turnovers forced (21.8) and steals (11.1).
West Virginia is third nationally in scoring margin (18.9), fourth in offensive rebounds (14.7), 10th in scoring offense (85.6) and 14th in assists (17.1).
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The ESPN TV crew for tonight’s Big Monday game will be Bob Wischusen, Fran Fraschilla and Holly Rowe.
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