Huggins wants competition, toughness from his West Virginia team

Bob Huggins believes his team has a chance.

And not just a chance to be good, but the veteran coaches’ own words, “really good.”

That’s a leap of faith considering how bad things were at times in last season’s 16-17 campaign, but that was then. This is well, now.

“You know I’m not going to leave, leaving it the way it was. That can’t happen,” Huggins said.

West Virginia has reconstructed the roster through a mix of a select number of holdovers, largely the freshmen from last season outside point guard Kedrian Johnson, and an influx of new players. Those nine new players are a mix from the transfer portal, junior college ranks and even high school.

The Mountaineers experienced almost a complete overhaul from last season which opens the door for intrigue as well as the unknown. The positive is that the transfer portal additions that the Mountaineers did acquire have all played at a high level at other power five programs.

“We’ve got more guys who can score, we do have some guys with experience, like you said we have size, we haven’t had size for quite a while and we get those guys where they can score it close and that takes a lot of pressure off those guys on the perimeter,” Huggins said. “We’ve got a couple guys that can really shoot it. It’s going to be interesting and fun because it’ll be competitive.”

The Mountaineers are as deep as they’ve been in recent years, which allows Huggins to throw a number of players at the opposition and even potentially entertain the press. That is far from a sure thing, but the head coach does believe that the Mountaineers could do it if needed.

“It’s not like some years where your guys that play are so much better than the guys that don’t play. We have guys where they’re really going to have to compete to play. We’re not going to have to play guys longer than they’re capable of playing well,” Huggins said.

That competition aspect is something that Huggins believes is vastly different from last season’s roster outside a few players. That trademark toughness simply wasn’t there as the Mountaineers were routinely beat at their own game in areas such as rebounding and hustling to loose balls.

That was especially true on the defensive end despite the fact that this team isn’t there on that end of the floor either yet.

“It’s going to be the way it’s supposed to be, it’s going to be competitive. You’re going to sit down and guard or somebody is going to show you how to do it while you sit there and watch. And they know that. They know they’re going to have to compete and have to guard,” Huggins said.

As for how his team has performed to date, Huggins believes that this group has shown the ability to put the ball in the basket and while the bigs are still developing they are more skilled and athletic.

Huggins isn’t sure what a starting lineup would consist of at this stage, but is excited to see how it all plays out in the coming weeks leading up to the start of the season. It’s a season that features a very challenging non-conference schedule which is going to test his theory on his club early and often.

“We’ll find out if we’re any good. If we’re as good as we hope to be, it’s not a big deal,” Huggins said.

----------

• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.

• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.

• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel

• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan

•Like us on Facebook