West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins has some choice words about his team’s defense.
“Trying to find the right word. We’re not very good,” Huggins said. “We’re not very good defensively.”
One of the biggest issues has been the ability to straight line drive this West Virginia defense to the basket, which can’t happen if you want to be sound on that end of the court.
B that wasn’t the case in the exhibition game against Akron as the Mountaineers held the Zips to 59 points while forcing a total of 20 turnovers. West Virginia played with a noticeable uptick in effort on that end of the floor and was able to pressure Akron into multiple mistakes.
But even then, Huggins wasn’t necessarily pleased.
“We played good in spurts, I guess. We didn’t continue to play. I thought our defense early on was pretty good and then it wasn’t any good,” he said.
He isn’t wrong as the 32-point lead the Mountaineers held with 14:54 remaining was whittled down to only 15 by the end of the game in large part because of a lack of focus on both ends of the floor.
That was an issue at times last season and speaks to what Huggins has tried to get across to his club.
“There’s a difference between guarding and guarding the way we guard. And we haven’t figured out the way we guard yet,” Huggins said.
The Mountaineers played an extended man defense at times where players had the option to trap and rotate out of it. It was a look that helped speed up Akron and is one of several different tools that the basketball team has in their belt for this coming season.
Senior guard Taz Sherman believes that the Mountaineers have been doing a better job in scramble situations by using their athleticism and length to disrupt things. That was apparent at the point guard position where each option was able to pressure the opposition into making mistakes.
But there is still a lot of work to do.
“We have a lot more to improve on with rotations, getting to the right spot, helping the helper,” he said.
Some of those things come with time and with a roster that features plenty of new faces, that will be the challenge moving forward as the Mountaineers settle into their roles. But in order to stay on the floor for Huggins you have to guard and defense is going to be under the spotlight moving forward.
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