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Non-conference slate valuable tool for WVU moving forward

West Virginia is 7-1 on the season.
West Virginia is 7-1 on the season.

Bob Huggins didn’t mince words when it came to the 90-37 win over Western Carolina even though he was bothered by the lack of energy in the game.

“But they watched tape. They knew we were going to win,” Huggins said of his team.

That’s not surprising considering the Mountaineers were favored by almost 40-points, but the game still served as a valuable teaching tool for Huggins before his squad enters the meat of Big 12 play.

Coming off the biggest win of the season on the road against Virginia, No. 15 West Virginia showed no signs of a letdown against the Catamounts jumping out to an early 20-point advantage and keeping their collective foot on the gas pedal from start to finish.

“We knew we couldn’t come out and lay and egg. We talked about it all week in practice about just going hard and giving all you could give,” sophomore Esa Ahmad said.

The result on the scoreboard is one thing but the message from Huggins to his team is to “do you,” over the stretch of non-conference games on the horizon.

That means executing on the offensive end, while making sure the rotations are crisp defensively. No necessarily to beat the teams on the current stretch but so those mistakes don’t cost the team later on.

West Virginia will host four consecutive non-conference games against VMI, Missouri Kansas City, Radford and Northern Kentucky before jumping into the meat of the Big 12 schedule with a date at Oklahoma State set for Dec. 30. That’s four more games to iron out some of the kinks.

So even when a game is as lopsided as it was against Western Carolina there are still opportunities to help prepare the team for what they will see down the road.

Against the Catamounts, West Virginia forced 34 turnovers, while shooting 49-percent from the floor. The Mountaineers won the battle of points off turnovers to the whopping tune of 37-0. But it was far from a perfect performance. West Virginia had 13 turnovers themselves.

“We can’t steal it if we throw it right back to them,” Huggins said.

On the plus side Huggins was able to get his bench into the game and valuable minutes for the freshmen on the roster. All fifteen players were able to get into the game and each of the scholarship freshmen were able to see valuable minutes to give them in-game experience.

That is what can prepare those players if their number is called later in the year when the games are much closer. Experience is experience any way you slice it.

“The biggest thing that came out of the second half is we played a lot of guys a lot of minutes,” Huggins said.

And it could be a formula you see repeating over the next several games.

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