MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - West Virginia's players were so excited and enthusiastic yesterday in practice about facing seventh-ranked Oklahoma on Saturday night that veteran coach Bob Huggins had to send them home early.
 
Well, not quite.
 
He did send them home, but for different reasons.
 
"From our performance in practice yesterday you would have thought we were playing Savannah State - we were horrible," Huggins said Friday morning. "We weren't bad, we were horrible to the point that I just told them to leave.
 
"I was blown away by their lack of enthusiasm (Thursday)," he continued. "It happens this time of year when there is no structure in their life. They stay up all night and sleep all day, like we all did at that age. They're much better when there is study hall and structure."
 
Fortunately for the sixth-ranked Mountaineers, the Oklahoma game wasn't Thursday night.
 
Or today.
 
It's tomorrow night, which means Huggins will have two more opportunities to get his team the structure and instruction it needs before facing the best offense in college basketball, led by the game's best player in freshman point guard Trae Young.
 
The son of former Texas Tech standout guard Rayford Young, Trae Young has become the game's next sensation, leading the country in scoring (29.4 ppg.) and assists (10.6).
 
He poured in 39 and handed out 14 assists in Oklahoma's 90-89 come-from-behind win at 16^th-ranked TCU last Saturday and followed that up with 27 points and 10 assists in OU's blowout win against Oklahoma State Wednesday night.
 
Earlier this year, he exploded for 43 points in a 90-80 win against Oregon.
 
At then-No. 3 Wichita State, he scored 29 and handed out 10 assists in an eight-point victory over the Shockers.
 
"I think (TCU coach) Jamie Dixon had the best solution (to guarding Young). He just said if he gets his average, fine, but you can't give him the 10 assists. You have to cut his assists in half," Huggins explained. "I think there is some merit to that. Obviously, they played them very well and he still got his."
 
It's tough to deny Young the ball because he's getting it from the moment Oklahoma takes it out of bounds. In the 13 games he's played so far, he's demonstrated the poise and awareness of a player far beyond his years.
 
In the TCU game, it was clear the Horned Frogs tried to be physical with him and it didn't seem to bother him in the slightest. It was suggested to Huggins that teams try to make Young work harder on defense to get him tired on the offensive end of the floor, but that is not as simple as it sounds.
 
"They have two of the best rim protectors probably in the country and he's really, really good off the ball," Huggins said. "He's way better off the ball than he is on the ball. But he gets away with not being great on the ball because they've got those guys back there protecting the rim.
 
"He makes plays off the ball that are sensational," Huggins added. "He's got such a great feel for the game. When somebody throws a pass with too much air under it he'll make a play on it. He made some plays that broke the Oklahoma State game open on defense - not offense - because he ran through balls and got them easy baskets and got them going again."
 
The West Virginia player responsible for trying to slow Young down is probably the best on-the-ball defender in the country - Jevon Carter.
 
Will the senior be able to disrupt Young enough to get him off his game?
 
Huggins said it will have to be a team effort because it's not practical for Carter to guard Young the entire game anyway.
 
"Obviously, he needs help," Huggins said. "That's a given with everybody, but when JC is right he's very valuable to us at both ends. You don't want to wear him out to where at the end of the game he can't make plays. He'll guard him, but he's not going to be the only one to guard him."
 
Carter was asked a number of different questions about Young on Friday morning, to the point where you could sense him getting visibly irritated.
 
"He's scoring a lot of different ways," Carter said. "I've just got to try and take things away from him and make it tough. A lot of their offense runs through him, and it's my job - our job - to do as good as we can to try and stop them."
 
The trap in doing so is spending too much time worrying about what Young can do, and forgetting about those other four guys out on the floor. Oklahoma is averaging 95.8 points per game, which means 66 of those are coming from the rest of the team.
 
Six-four guard Christian James is averaging 13, while 6-foot-9-inch forward Brady Manek is averaging 11.8 points and ranks second to Khadeem Lattin on the team in rebounding, and is also shooting better than 40 percent from the floor.
 
That's a pretty lethal combination for WVU's bigs to handle.
 
"They've got like five guys shooting better than 40 percent, and they've got a couple more close," Huggins said. "We can sit and talk about anything you want to talk about, but the bottom line is make shots. You win it if you make more shots than your opposition.
 
"They make shots."
 
Or, figure out a way to disrupt and bother them to the point where they make fewer shots than you do.
 
That is probably the best way for West Virginia to win on Saturday, even though the Mountaineers are averaging 84.2 points per game and are facing a team that is giving up 80.6 points per contest.
 
"We play a unique type of defense," Carter explained. "It's hard to see teams play the way we play so we're the only team that plays the way we play.
 
"Every game is a battle, and we've got to be ready to fight. It's a challenge. It's another game and I'm going to try and get another win," the senior concluded.
 
A 7:15 tipoff is slated for Saturday's game, to be televised nationally on ESPN2 (Jon Sciambi and Fran Fraschilla).
 
The Mountaineer Sports Network's statewide radio coverage begins at 6:15 p.m. and also includes WVUsports.com and the popular mobile app TuneIn.
 
Saturday's game is expected to be the biggest crowd of the year at the Coliseum. No tickets remain.
 


Pregame Notes: Saturday's game will only be the sixth time ever Morgantown has seen two top-10 ranked college basketball teams squaring off, five of those coming since Bob Huggins has been here and three since 2016 … One team or the other has been ranked the last nine times West Virginia and Oklahoma have played dating back to 2014 … Saturday's game will be the third time both have been ranked in the top 10 at the same time, making this one of the red-letter matchups in the Big 12 each year now … Another fascinating note, Saturday's game will be the 36^th straight time WVU is playing a ranked team while also being ranked - the prior best was 14 straight times from 1956-60 when the Mountaineers were playing in the lowly Southern Conference … Oklahoma is shooting an outstanding 50.6 percent as a team, with five players in its regular nine-man rotation shooting 51.7 percent or better … By comparison, the Mountaineers have one player shooting better than 50 percent (sophomore forward Sagaba Konate at 55.1 percent) and are shooting 43.9 percent as a team … Last year, the two teams split with the road team winning both contests … OU has won four out of the last six against West Virginia, including the last two in Morgantown … Overall, Oklahoma owns a 9-5 advantage in the series … Huggins indicated earlier this week that Carter has been slowed by a sprained wrist, but he said it was much better this Friday morning … One thing to keep an eye on is Oklahoma's transition offense and its ability to get open 3s in transition once it beats pressure, "They're going to shoot it, but they're going to shoot it off a miss, too; long misses are wide-open 3s for them," Huggins said … The Sooners have scored more than 100 points in a game five times this year, including a season-high 109 against the Oklahoma State Wednesday night.