WVU basketball: Mountaineers begin Texas tour vs. Longhorns | WVU
In pointing out how tricky the Significant 12 Conference is in the course of his Zoom media contact on Friday early morning, West Virginia men’s basketball coach Bob Huggins summed it up, saying simply just, “We really don’t have off nights.”
In reality, there are off evenings for the duration of league participate in, but WVU is about to have a great deal much less of them over the following 7 days-plus.
No. 13 WVU (14-6 total, 7-4 Big 12 Meeting) will get started a rugged extend of a few straight street online games in the state of Texas with a vacation to No. 12 Texas on Saturday. The video game will idea at 3 p.m. and air on ABC.
The Longhorns (13-5, 7-4) possess a 72-70 victory in Morgantown back on Jan. 9 on the power of a previous-2nd Andrew Jones 3-pointer.
Any activity versus Texas is challenging, and that is multiplied when the game is in Austin. But with online games at TCU and No. 2 Baylor within six times and a fourth recreation again household against Kansas Point out following Saturday, the Longhorns are just the idea of iceberg.
“We’ve genuinely tried out to back again off on observe time to a degree, and the intensity of follow, simply because we’re acquiring prepared to go via a thing that I do not assume any person else in America is heading to go as a result of,” Huggins mentioned. “Nobody else is going to enjoy three games in six days and bus in concerning. Not this time of 12 months. Not taking part in this caliber of persons night in and night out.”
Back to icebergs: A huge portion of the country, like the state of Texas, was slammed with a winter season storm around the previous 7 days, and travel disorders and ability outages stay an difficulty in the Lone Star State as perfectly.
“There’s a large amount of issues,” Huggins reported. “You’ve received scenarios with the aircraft, obviously, you’ve got predicaments with the lodges, in some circumstances I think you have scenarios with the arenas — they’ve rather a great deal got statewide troubles with electric power, drinking water, all forms of challenges.”
On the court, the Mountaineers will have a good deal of difficulties in excess of the up coming eight days as properly. The final time out saw West Virginia drop to No. 9 Oklahoma 91-90 in double time beyond regulation in Morgantown. Senior guard Taz Sherman was back again immediately after missing an 82-71 victory at Texas Tech with a groin personal injury, but was limited, actively playing just 16 minutes.
Huggins claimed that Sherman has appeared superior in apply in new days, but practice is exactly where Huggins initially spotted trouble in the times primary up to the contest towards the Sooners, and with the intensity remaining muzzled a little bit in planning for the long street excursion. With restricted time and travel in among the future 4 game titles, methods are heading to be an unreliable barometer.
The authentic query is, how do the Mountaineers entirely reset and modify recreation options inside of just a working day or two whilst traversing the condition of Texas in a bus?
“We can not,” Huggins mentioned. “I assume you just take them a person at a time. I believe actively playing [the season-opening Bad Boy Mowers Crossover Classic in] South Dakota will probably support us due to the fact that’s what you do there. You participate in the game, then you go back again to the lodge and observe movie and attempt to crack factors down and figure out what we can do to be thriving and attempt to keep them from staying as thriving and then you go engage in the recreation.”
As for the Longhorns, Jones sales opportunities the way in scoring at 15.9 factors for every video game, with fellow guards Courtney Ramey (13.2) and Matt Coleman III (12.7) just driving. Greg Brown rounds out the team’s double-figure scorers at 11.5 details per match.
As for what lies outside of the following 4 game titles, which is still unclear for the Mountaineers. A 10-day window was created into the schedule involving the stop of the standard season and the commencing of the Large 12 Event, which commences on March 10. WVU has three postponed games that have but to be established with makeup dates, all home games against Oklahoma Condition, TCU and Baylor.
How numerous, if any, land on the timetable concerning Feb. 28 and March 9 continues to be to be noticed, but there’s a chance that concerning the up coming eight days, the league’s make-up week, the Big 12 Match and the NCAA Match, WVU is heading to be pretty chaotic for the rest of the time.
“I think the would like and the expectation of the league is to play as numerous video games as you can quite possibly perform,” Huggins reported. “I know you men are wise ample to know that television performs a massive portion of this. It is going to be a superior little bit dictated by what television dictates. It’s not in anybody’s finest fascination to enjoy a few online games in six times, come on. Especially, you are taking part in distinct designs, you’re taking part in on their home court — it’s a large amount of issues. But we’re the only types carrying out it.
“We have a great deal of points that a ton of other persons never have to endure.”
Also on Friday, Huggins was named to the Werner Ladder Naismith’s Men’s Mentor of the Calendar year enjoy checklist by the Atlanta Tipoff Club. The checklist consists of 15 coaches, with Huggins currently being one particular of 4 from the Major 12 Conference, joining Baylor’s Scott Drew, Oklahoma’s Lon Kruger and Texas’ Shaka Good.
