Men’s Basketball
WVU is now three games into the Big 12 season, and the first two went more or less how one would have expected. A road loss to top 5 Iowa State, a home win over an average Cincy team. However, they came through with a big upset win at home to Top 25 Kansas (although the loss might knock KU out of the top 25). There have been a couple things I’ve seen from this team a bit too often, which give me flashbacks to some of the problems of the Bob Huggins teams. One is the offense has a tendency to have at least one really bad scoring drought. Sometimes they turn leads in to nailbiters or even deficits. Other times, WVU sees a close game turn into a substantial deficit. No team is going to avoid scoring droughts entirely, but this team is having them too frequently. Another aspect is poor free throw shooting. There are 361 teams in Division 1, and WVU ranks #276 with 69.1%. If you are in a close game, you don’t want to give away too many points on the free throw line. Finally, WVU has been good on defense, with one notable exception: 3-point shooting. In KenPom’s defensive statistics, WVU is 54 th overall, and among his key “4 Factors” WVU ranks 35,86,35,and 32. WVU is seventh overall in defensive 2-point shot percentage. But they are just 231 th in defensive 3-points shooting percentage. And when you watch the game, it’s easy to see why: WVU leaves too many wide open three-point shots. In the Kansas win, they managed to avoid a bad scoring drought, and they did make free throws down the stretch – but missed several in the first 30 minutes of the game. Still, I like Ross Hodge and this team. Hopefully we can see more performances like the one we saw against Kansas.
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