Improving WVU Needs to Continue Improving

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Bob Huggins has had to fix one problem at a time for his youthful West Virginia University men's basketball team, coming off an 88-76 victory over Valparaiso last Saturday afternoon at the WVU Coliseum.

After watching his team commit 19 turnovers in an overtime loss to Buffalo, and then seeing that number swell to 22 in a six-point defeat to Western Kentucky down in Myrtle Beach, Huggins did some tweaking to make sure the right people had the basketball at the right time in the right spots on the floor.

Since then, WVU committed 12 miscues in its 97-90 consolation-game victory over St. Joseph's and only seven in its 12-point win over Valpo.

West Virginia's freshmen point guards, Brandon Knapper and Jordan McCabe, made just two turnovers (both coming from Knapper in 27 minutes) against the Crusaders.

Forward Esa Ahmad, who turned the ball over six times against Buffalo and four against Western Kentucky, had just one turnover because he received the basketball in places where he could do something good with it.

"They didn't really pressure us much, but we did pass the ball better," Huggins said following Saturday's Valpo win. "We've put an enormous amount of time in trying to teach them how to feed the post and pass to the cutters and those kinds of things."

Consequently, Ahmad scored a career-high 30 points on 12-of-15 shooting, most of those coming around the rim either on set plays or offensive put-backs.

"I kind of get him playing without the ball, and then he's back to handling the ball and handling the ball is not his thing," Huggins admitted. "He's not a real explosive kind of athlete, but he's a really good basketball player because he understands how to play."

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Ahmad's outstanding work around the rim has enabled Sagaba Konate to continue to demonstrate his improved outside shooting touch where he made five-of-eight from 3-point distance and is now making a team-best 45 percent from behind the arc.

Konate's career-high 26 points came mostly from the outside where Valpo's 7-foot-1-inch junior center Derrik Smits couldn't guard him.

"I'm OK with him (shooting 3s)," Huggins said. "He just can't shoot it on the first pass. We got beat by Western Kentucky because whoever got it, shot it. We run some motion and some curls and things, and he stepped back and got his shoulders squared. He's worked really hard at shooting it."

WVU's three-man forward game of Ahmad, Konate and junior Lamont West accounted for 67 of the Mountaineers' 88 points on a combined 25-of-37 shooting.

Those guys were outstanding and their supporting cast did a good job of getting them the basketball, especially Knapper whose seven assists on Saturday were a season high. By the way, the freshman now has 12 of his team-best 17 assists in his last two games.

Now, Huggins has to turn his attention to fixing West Virginia's defense, which allowed Valparaiso to shoot 53.6 percent for the game including one stretch at the beginning of the second half when the Crusaders scored on six of their first eight offensive possessions.

Huggins has tried about every zone defense ever devised to slow down straight-line drives to the basket, including your standard church-league 2-3 defense.

He's even tried the 1-3-1 earlier this year, and he also considered using the old 1-1-3 hockey defense he once played in college at WVU, but Huggins said that's much harder to teach his younger players.

"The search is ongoing," he said.

On Wednesday night, he's going to have to come up with something much better to slow down 2-1 Rider, coming off consecutive 20-point victories over Coppin State and Wagner.

The Broncs have all five starters back from last year's team that won 22 games and finished tied for first in the Metro Atlantic before losing to St. Peter's in the MAAC championship game.

Rider also lost a shootout at Oregon in the first round of last year's NIT and this year clearly has its sights on making its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1994.

This is Kevin Baggett's deepest and most experienced team with all but one of his top 10 guys from last year returning.

Therefore, Wednesday night's game at the Coliseum against Rider could turn out to be Buffalo Part II.

Will the Mountaineers take care of the ball much better against the Broncs than they did in the opener against the Bulls?

Will West Virginia cover Rider's 3-point shooters and contain its top scorers Dimencio Vaughn and Jordan Allen – something it failed to do against Buffalo when C.J. Massinburg went off for 43 points to threaten Austin Carr's all-time Coliseum scoring record of 47 points established 47 years ago?

On paper, this game might not seem like a Red Letter one to the WVU students nor the casual Mountaineer fan, but this Rider team could be hunting for an NCAA Tournament berth in March.

And beating the Broncs could also help West Virginia in its quest of reaching a fifth straight NCAA trip and its 10^thoverall under Huggins.

Schedule

Players Mentioned

Brandon Knapper

Sagaba Konate

Jordan McCabe

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