West Virginia Needs Some Work On The Defensive End
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MORGANTOWN-- As West Virginia's men's basketball team readies itself to close out the non-conference portion of its 2022-23 season before Christmas break against Stony Brook on Thursday evening at the Coliseum in what figures to be a walkover, the question most being asked about Bob Huggins' Mountaineers is about how good this team is.
The problem is, that's the wrong question.
Instead, what fans should concern themselves with is not how good they are now but what they can become by March, which is, after all, the ultimate goal.
It has become obvious this is a good team, a team with many offensive weapons, but also a team with some holes. And in a conference like the Big 12, eliminating weaknesses is far more important than leaning on your strengths.
Teams in the Big 12, the nation's strongest conference, feast upon weaknesses rather than overwhelming opponents with their own strengths.
Right now, WVU's major weakness is on the defensive side of the ball, something no one will argue considering they average 81.9 points a game, are shooting 49.8% from the floor -- already matching the five 50% percent shooting games they had all of last year -- and hitting 37.8% of their 3s.
But their two losses were to Purdue and Xavier, the only two sure shot tournament teams they have faced, and they beat the Mountaineers by putting up 80 and 84 points.
And if you think they have solved the problem, Buffalo put a hole in such thinking by scoring 78, taking advantage of a big weakness of guarding players driving to the basket.
Buffalo scored 38 points in the paint against a bigger, stronger, more athletic team by running unmolested pick-and-roll plays to the basket over and over.
What this is screaming out is that West Virginia will be as good as its defense allows it to be.
If they conquer the problem and the defense catches up to the offense, how good can they be?
"We'll be unbeatable. We'll win the national championship if that happens," guard Erik Stevenson, who is the team's leading scorer but who has been around long enough to know that a strong defense is necessary.
One potential solution could be something that all WVU fans, and their team's coach, Bob Huggins, know about, a return to some form of a "Press Virginia" defense.
But Huggins isn't sure this team, as athletic and talented as it is, is equipped for that.
"We've kind of looked at it," he admitted. "I want as much as everyone else does … I'd like to get back to "Press Virginia" as much as we possibly could, but we don't have Jevon Carter. Look what he's doing in the NBA. And Sagaba Konate is the best shot blocker …. I don't know if he was Kenyon Martin, but next to him he was the best shot blocker I've ever coached.
"We don't have that. He erased a lot of mistakes. If you go back and look at some of those games, it wasn't our press so much as it was what he did at the end of it. We don't have that."
Keedy Johnson is a plus defender who could fill the Carter role, perhaps not at the level of National Defensive Player of the Year that Carter attained. And Mo Wague could potentially evolve into a solid shot blocker, but to play him you would have to keep Jimmy Bell Jr. on the bench.
Anyone who saw Bell's first double-double against Buffalo on Sunday night knows that isn't something you would want to do while he is just beginning to realize how he can impact a game. Besides, "Press Virginia" would wear him down quickly, actually working against what he brings to the table.
So, as a change up, Huggins could put it in -- and probably will -- but it can't be the weapon it was back in the day when Jonathon Holton and Nathan Adrian were at the point with Carter and Konate.
Instead, they continue to work on stopping the pick-and-roll but just haven't been able to get the hang of it.
"Most people are guarding (the high ball screen) left/right. If he goes left, the guy on the left takes it. If it goes the other way, the guy on the right takes," Huggins explained. The idea most often has the opponent using it to attack WVU's worst defender of the two involved.
But Huggins says the problem isn't covering the man who comes off the screen, but covering the screener, who then rolls toward the basket and far too often comes totally free.
"Our problem is we didn't catch the roll guy," Huggins said after Buffalo. "We just stood there. So, if we were on the left and went right, we picked it up with the guy on the right but the left guy just stood out there. They rolled or slipped, whatever terminology you want to use, and the man didn't go with him.
"The reality is we should be under him. We were a long way from being under him."
So, the work goes forward, and if Huggins and the players can come up with a solution to raise the defensive level to that of the offense, we all may be enjoying March Madness all the way to the end.