MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – If the message Bob Huggins is giving his team is similar to the one he delivered to the media on Tuesday afternoon, then his guys are about to get into the soup on Wednesday night when West Virginia takes on 15^th-ranked Connecticut inside the WVU Coliseum.
 
Huggins said Danny Hurley's fourth UConn squad reminds him of some of Jim Calhoun's better Husky teams when the two were going up against each other in the Big East.
 
"They're really good. They're athletic as can be," Huggins said. "They do a great job in transition and they really rebound it with superior athletes."
 
After listening to Huggins, you get the impression that Connecticut's athleticism is off the charts. He mentioned the word multiple times during his 22-minute afternoon session with the media.
 
"They're deep, they can score multiple ways and they really defend," he said.
 
And by the way, they're athletic - if you haven't been paying attention.
 
"They are as good a transition team as I've seen in quite a while," Huggins noted. "They really get out and run. They fill lanes and they finish. They all go rebound it and keep balls alive."
 
Two of Connecticut's better athletes - 6-foot-9, 240-pound sophomore forward Adama Sanogo, and 6-foot-6, 215-pound guard Tyrese Martin - aren't likely to suit up for tomorrow night's game. Martin has been sidelined with a fractured left wrist while Sanogo is nursing an abdominal strain, so that's roughly 28 points and 14 rebounds removed from Connecticut's lineup.
 
Their replacements, 6-foot-9, 200-pound junior Akok Akok and 6-foot-5 freshman guard Jordan Hawkins, both scored double figures in UConn's most recent 88-59 victory over Grambling.
 
Akok was one of the top shot blockers in the country last year before an Achilles tendon tear ended his season at Memphis, and Hawkins was the No. 1-rated player in Maryland last year and was part of Connecticut's top-10-rated recruiting class, so the drop off hasn't been too noticeable so far.
 
R.J. Cole, a 6-foot-1 guard who began his collegiate career at Howard, has been Connecticut's most consistent performer through nine games averaging a team-best 16.3 points and 4.4 assists per game.
 
Cole scored a season-high 26 in an overtime victory over VCU and had 24 in the double-overtime win over Auburn in the Bahamas. 
 
"He does a little bit of everything," Huggins said of Cole. "He can get them in offense. He can score. He defends. He's a really good rebounder for a 6-foot-1 guy. From the outside looking in, he looks like the guy running the show and making everything happen. He's the one making sure everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing."
 
To knock off Connecticut and give West Virginia a marquee non-conference victory before Big 12 play begins at Texas on Jan. 1, Huggins said many areas need to improve following last Saturday's lackluster 67-51 win over Radford.
 
At one point, the Mountaineers were leading the Highlanders by 27 points early in the second half before Huggins began substituting freely. The backups were actually outscored 27 to 25 over the final 15 minutes of the game. When asked what his biggest concerns were, Huggins listed his team's passing woes, turnovers, rebounding and inconsistent shooting among the biggest heading into Wednesday night.
 
"Do you want me to keep going?" he said. "It's hard to sit here and put them in order. When they're multiple it takes a little more time.
 
"I wish we were a little better at this time, and hopefully we get better," he added.
 
West Virginia (7-1) was without second-leading scorer Sean McNeil for the Radford game with a lower back injury and Huggins called him "day to day."
 
Senior guard Taz Sherman picked up some of McNeil's offensive production by scoring 27 against the Highlanders, six points above his season averaged. Sherman scored a career-high 28 against Eastern Kentucky and had 27 in a win against Elon in Charleston, South Carolina.
 
If McNeil can't go on Wednesday night, then West Virginia will not have another player on the floor against the Huskies averaging double figures.
 
In order to hang with 8-1 Connecticut, West Virginia is going to need the same energy, intensity, enthusiasm and excitement from the players and its fans on Wednesday night.
 
Connecticut has yet to play a true road game this season and has not played in hostile arena since the 2019-20 season when it played at Memphis.
 
COVID-19 restrictions limited the capacities in UConn's games played last season.
 
Wednesday night's meeting is part of the Big East/Big 12 Battle and will be televised nationally on ESPN2 (Chuckie Kempf and Tim Welsh). 
 
Tipoff is set for 7 p.m.
 
Briefly:
 
* Huggins was asked Tuesday if he has an appreciation for Danny Hurley being a coach's son. His father, Bob Hurley Sr., was once a nationally known high school coach at St. Anthony High in Jersey City, New Jersey, before retiring in 2017. Huggins' late father Charlie was one of the most successful coaches in Ohio prep basketball history.
 
"I have an appreciation for what coach's sons go through, if his experience was anything like mine," Huggins said. "My dad used to say, 'We don't take it home.' That was one of the few things he said that wasn't totally accurate."
 
* Huggins mentioned that DePaul transfer Pauly Paulicap has been the team's most consistent inside player in practice and games so far. Paulicap scored 7 points and grabbed five rebounds in just eight minutes of action in the Radford win and is seemingly improving each time out.
 
"But he's undersized," Huggins pointed out, adding that he's probably closer to 6-foot-6 than his listed 6-foot-8.
 
* Huggins was asked to reminisce about past West Virginia-UConn games when the two were members of the old Big East Conference. The one game he said that immediately comes to mind was during the Mountaineers' Final Four season in 2010 when he was ejected late in a 73-62 loss to the Huskies in Gampel Pavilion.
 
He was asked what he did to get thrown out of the game and he answered, "Probably not as much as Calhoun!"
 
* West Virginia is now 1-1 in these Big East challenge games, losing on a last-second shot at St. John's in 2019 and winning at Georgetown last year.
 
* Wednesday's game will be Connecticut's first appearance in Morgantown since March 2, 2011, a 65-56 West Virginia victory. WVU also defeated the Huskies the last time the two met in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Nov. 23, 2014, in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off, 78-68.
 
* The Mountaineers rank third in the country this week in turnover margin at +8.4 per game.
 
* Earlier today, the Mountaineer Ticket Office announced on social media that an extra 500 upper-level seats are being made available to WVU students who want to come to Wednesday night's game. Another crowd of more than 10,000 is expected.
 
West Virginia had 14,100 for its Nov. 12 Backyard Brawl meeting against Pitt, drew 10,062 fans for its meeting against Eastern Kentucky and had 11,014 spectators for last Saturday's Radford game. Freshman guard Seth Wilson, experiencing a packed Coliseum for the first time against Pitt, admitted he was unprepared for that type of environment.
 
"The floor shakes," he laughed. "I didn't expect that."