MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — With more than a week between its most recent game against Youngstown State and the Big 12 Conference opener at Texas, West Virginia is in the early stages of its most extended scheduled break between contests this season.
The Mountaineers (11-1) ran off an eighth straight win Wednesday against the Penguins, overcoming a first half in which they shot 23 percent and missed 16 of their first 18 shots by exploding for 58 second-half points, including 23 from guard Sean McNeil to lead the way in a comfortable 82-52 victory.
It marked the sixth straight contest West Virginia held the opposition below 60 points and the ninth time that’s occurred in 12 games. Afterward, fifth-year YSU head coach Jerrod Calhoun, a former assistant under Huggins at WVU and head coach at Fairmont State, had lofty praise for a team he believes is falling under the radar.
“West Virginia is going to be alright,” Calhoun said. “Just in the last 24 hours, I heard they can’t shoot, they can’t make free throws, they can’t do this and they can’t do that. But they win.”
The Mountaineers have relied heavily on McNeil and fellow guard Taz Sherman to handle the bulk of the scoring load, but Calhoun believes WVU’s identity can be found in its defense, which held the Penguins to a season-low point total.
West Virginia utilized full-court defensive pressure to bother the Penguins, particularly in the second half when they were without injured point guard Shemar Rathan-Mayes. YSU finished with 20 turnovers and was outscored 29-3 in points off turnovers.
“[WVU point guard Kedrian] Johnson is one of the best defenders I’ve seen and probably the best since Jevon [Carter] a couple of years ago. He’s really the head of the snake,” Calhoun said. “He and Gabe [Osabuohien] are the unsung heroes. [Sherman and McNeil] shoot all the balls and get all the credit, but it’s a team. Those guys do all the dirty work. I thought they did a great job of smothering us.”
West Virginia ranks 30th in all of college basketball in scoring defense, allowing the opposition an average of 59.8 points. The Mountaineers haven’t opted to pressure the length of the court consistently, instead picking and choosing to do so in certain spots, which has proved effective to this point.
“We hang our hat on the defensive end,” McNeil said. “Whether shots are falling or not, it’s kind of our thing. The first 12 games, sometimes when our offense isn’t flowing, we end up getting stops and somehow win games, and people are like, ‘How did they win?’ It’s because of our defense, and at some point we figure out our offense. It’s got us to this point, but we have to figure it out going into Big 12 play for sure.”
The Mountaineers have allowed opponents to make 271 field goals, while forcing 221 turnovers to this point. The 18.4 turnovers WVU is forcing on average is 13th best in college basketball and has helped Huggins’ team generate offense at times when it’s struggling to score.
“This is a Bob Huggins team,” Calhoun said. “Not a good defensive team — a tremendous defensive team. If they just keep with that mindset and get Isaiah [Cottrell)] and Jalen [Bridges] going a little bit, they are going to be good. I really like their team.”
Yet for as strong as West Virginia has been defensively to leave itself in good position ahead of league play, the challenges are only going to get tougher as time goes on.
With 18 Big 12 games and a matchup at Arkansas awaiting over a span of nine weeks, each of the Mountaineers’ remaining 19 opponents is currently among the top 70 nationally in Ken Pomeroy’s ratings, which WVU finds itself No. 41 in.
The conference opener January 1 pits WVU against the Longhorns, who are 9-2 overall and lead the country allowing 53 points on average.
“I would guess that a lot of those guys when we’re warming up at one end and Texas is warming up at the other end, they’re going to say, ‘Oh my God.’ They’re really big and there’s a lot of them,” Huggins said. “We have to do what we do. We got out-rebounded by [the Penguins, 39-32]. Can you imagine what that would be at Texas? We have to do a better job.
“It seems like the older guys are more in-tune with what I’m telling them, where those other guys have been wherever they’ve been and I don’t think there’s the urgency to continue to be one of the premier programs in the country. A lot of them are at places where it’s, ‘OK, we are what we are and we’re not good enough to be there, so let’s not worry about it.’ Where here, with the legacy that we have here, I don’t want Jerrod calling me and saying, ‘What the hell is going on there?’ We have an obligation to some of the greatest alumni in the world to a state that loves basketball. This is, for what anybody wants to say, think or do, a basketball state — and we all know that.“