Mountaineer Insider Podcast- Fran Fraschilla

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – One of the best in the business will be calling West Virginia's game against Kansas State Saturday afternoon at the WVU Coliseum – ESPN college basketball analyst Fran Fraschilla.

Fran is also taking part in this year's Bob Huggins Fish Fry to raise money for the Norma Mae Huggins Endowment Fund benefiting the WVU Cancer Institute and the Remember the Miners Scholarship Fund.

This year's event is taking place Friday night at 7 p.m. and will be done virtually because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Our Dan Zangrilli caught up with Fran for today's Mountaineer Insider Podcast, which can be found on your favorite podcast services.

"All things considered, I'm blessed," Fraschilla said. "We have college basketball. We're keeping the kids, the coaches and the staff safe. I live in Dallas and we had a little weather issue down here last week, which is nothing new to the folks in the state of West Virginia, but any ice or snow in Texas and people freak out. We did get through it and some Big 12 games were canceled but all things considered, I've had a great seat this year covering college basketball and particularly Big 12."

On Saturday, his seat will be pointed toward a monitor watching West Virginia play Kansas State – one of four consecutive games at the WVU Coliseum for the Mountaineers to conclude the 2021 regular season.

The Big 12 announced its updated schedule to wrap up the regular season last week.

"If you listen to Huggs through the years, he would tell you it's about time because as we all know the travel and the schedule is not conducive to West Virginia coming into this part of the country as much as they have to being a part of such a great league," Fraschilla said. "He has no complaints this year the way things are shaking out, but give him credit, I think it's six straight conference road wins and that's a heck of an accomplishment for the Mountaineers this season."

Fraschilla believes the Mountaineers may be peaking at the right time this year, particularly since early January after dealing with Oscar Tshiebwe's transfer.

"They had a great start to the season. It was obviously a great, great performance against Gonzaga and then Oscar left," he explained. "I hate to put it this way because anybody who knows Oscar knows he's a really nice young man and is potentially going to be a good player - and Duke is going through this right now. I hate to say addition by subtraction because it's not an attack on the young man's character at all, but this team in some ways this is a better team because the pieces fit better."

Fraschilla uses one word to describe why: spacing.

"If you are a fan of the game, all you hear every single night from every basketball analyst is spacing. In modern college football, it's not great to have two good fullbacks because offenses are designed to spread defenses out and throw the ball down the field, and it's similar in basketball," he said. "When you have four instead of three guys playing out beyond the 3-point line, automatically Derek Culver has more room inside to operate. If you want to go down and double team him the guy doubling is coming from the perimeter is going to have a hard time coming back out to his man if his man is open.

"That obviously seems fairly logical. The other thing, and the reason why Taz (Sherman) and Deuce (McBride) have had such good seasons is they're not only great shooters, but they are also really effective at putting the ball on the floor and getting to the basket. You have that kind of space with only one big guy in there. Mathematics teaches you that instead of four big bodies in there – two offense and two defense – there is only two and that's why we say that."

Fraschilla said he's been impressed with West Virginia's 19-point comeback road wins at Oklahoma State and Texas. It takes a great deal of toughness and resiliency to do that.

He said he can also understand why West Virginia has gotten behind by some of the teams in the Big 12 this year.

"This is a great league, and the opponents they have played are pretty good," he explained. "Let's go back to last Saturday when they were down at the half, a game I called. Texas shot out of their mind. One of the things I said at halftime was 'I'm not sure Texas can play any better than they played in the first half and if I'm Bob Huggins that's exactly what I tell my team at halftime.' Now they went from down 10 to down 19, but they did make the comeback so some of the inconsistency is a product of who they are playing and how good these teams are."

He added, "You cannot deny the fact that a 19-point deficit could turn into a 19-point loss if you don't have the character this team seems to have. I've probably never heard Huggs compliment a team more than he's complimenting this team, so that does tell me he really likes these guys."

What Fraschilla particularly likes about this year's West Virginia team is the variety of offensive production it can get on any given night.

One night it might be Derek Culver inside. Another night it could be Deuce McBride or Taz Sherman scoring off the bounce or Sean McNeil filling it up from behind the 3-point line.

Emmitt Matthews Jr. and now freshman forward Jalen Brides have had their moments, too, offensively.

The spacing and the offensive variety makes the Mountaineers a tough guard this year.

"They can withstand Sean McNeil picking up two fouls in the first half at Texas, or Taz Sherman being out for a game or two with an injury or allowing a young Jalen Bridges to grow up on the fly," Fraschilla said. "That is the beauty of this team. They have enough depth on the perimeter.

"When they're on they're going to blow you out, but if it's a night when somebody is not knocking down shots the likelihood, statistically, is someone else will be making shots. Through the years covering West Virginia, that's not always been the case. We know often times in recent years they have won by what I would call 'ugly' with their defense and their offensive rebounding," he continued. "Oftentimes their best offense was someone taking a shot and missing and grabbing an offensive rebound."

Fraschilla sees a playing style this year that Mountaineer fans can embrace and appreciate.

"It's one thing to win ugly, and winning is fun, but it's another thing to win and play entertaining basketball, and I think they are doing more of that this year," Fraschilla noted.

The veteran analyst said he's excited to take part in a such a worthy cause tomorrow night benefiting the WVU Cancer Center.

"Those of us who know Bob Huggins know he's not always that massive grizzly bear of a guy on the sidelines yelling at officials. The guy is a tremendous human being," Fraschilla said. "He cares about his family, he cares about West Virginia University, he cares about the state and for him to continue to raise money to fight cancer for the hospital right there in town is just wonderful.

"I talked to (men's basketball administrative assistant) Debbie (Williams) and she said they have already raised $300,000, and we haven't even had the Fry yet. It's going to be another really successful event."

This year's Fish Fry is once again presented by Little General Stores.

Schedule

Players Mentioned

Jalen Bridges

Derek Culver

Emmitt Matthews Jr.

Sean McNeil

Taz Sherman

Oscar Tshiebwe

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