(Bob Huggins pregame press conference)
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia’s first and only exhibition at 7 p.m. Friday against Akron allows veteran Mountaineer head coach Bob Huggins to get a look at the progress his team has made throughout preseason.
While the Mountaineers met Dayton in a closed scrimmage in Columbus last Saturday, Huggins expects a different test from the Zips, who finished 15-8 and third in the Mid-American Conference last season.
“Akron’s going to be really good for us,” Huggins said. “It’s really good that it is an exhibition, probably for both teams. They lost their point guard and have to break in a new point guard. We obviously lost our point guard, so it’s going to be good for Akron, and it’s going to be good for us.
“They’re also a team that has really good size on the front line. Playing a team with good size on the front line is more what we’re going to see when we get into Big 12 play, but also with a lot of people that we’re going to play preseason.”
All proceeds from the exhibition at the Coliseum will benefit the Norma Mae Huggins Cancer Research Endowment Fund in what marks the last time the Mountaineers face an opponent before the November 9 season opener against Oakland.
“We want to get better — that’s the biggest thing,” Huggins said. “Playing against somebody different really helps you, because you don’t have guys knowing what you’re doing. Those guys play against each other so much and they know the sets, they know all that stuff. You play against somebody new and having to guard somebody who’s going to do something else. Dayton was good, because Anthony [Grant] is a really good coach. They run really good stuff. They’re just young.”
The Zips were led by point guard Loren Christian Jackson last season. One season after earning MAC player of the year honors, Jackson returned to Akron and was the team’s top scorer at 22.3 points.
Jackson is no longer around, though the Zips’ second, third and fourth leading scorers from last season are. They’ve also added a pair of veteran guards through the transfer portal in Xavier Castaneda from South Florida and K.J. Walton, who previously played at Missouri and Ball State.
“We’re not very good defensively and that’s why Akron will be good for us,” Huggins said. “They have veteran guys, they have a couple transfer guys that came in that were very successful at their level. We turned it up a little bit against Dayton at the end and were playing against a lot of young guys there. This is more a veteran team and veteran teams ought to execute better and ought to just plain be better.”
Seven of WVU’s 15 players are newcomers to the program, and the Mountaineers are still trying to get up to speed defensively. The matchup with the Zips will give West Virginia a better idea of what it needs work on, though Huggins believes stopping penetration is at or near the top of the list.
“There’s a difference between guarding and guarding the way we guard,” he said. “We haven’t figured out the way we guard yet.
“To be a good defensive team, you can’t give straight line drives. Everybody who touches the ball gets a straight line drive right now against us.”
While the result of the game holds no merit, Huggins and the WVU coaching staff are approaching the exhibition as if it’s a regular season contest, particularly as it pertains to the team’s four freshmen and three additions through the transfer portal.
“We have freshmen who have never been through it and we have transfers who have been through something, but I have absolutely no idea what it was,” Huggins said. “To try to get them indoctrinated into what we do and how we do things, it’s really important.”
WVU returns guards Taz Sherman and Sean McNeil, who combined to average better than 25 points last season, while forwards Jalen Bridges and Gabe Osabuohien were key pieces of the rotation.
Six-foot-10 redshirt freshman Isaiah Cottrell has healed from a torn Achilles tendon and is likely to see an expanded role, as is returning point guard Kedrian Johnson.
Old Dominion transfer Malik Curry and freshman Kobe Johnson are battling with Johnson for playing time at point guard, while Florida International transfer Dimon Carrigan and DePaul transfer Pauly Paulicap hope to add depth and defensive prowess in the front court.
“I’m just trying to remember their names,” Huggins said. “We have 15 guys. We have a lot of new guys.”