With 43-years of coaching under his belt Bob Huggins will experience a first this week.
West Virginia will play three consecutive home games to close the regular season after already beating Kansas State in Morgantown 65-43 over the weekend. That gives the Mountaineers four straight games at home with a lot on the line for the program down the stretch run of the season.
It’s one of the rare times that you’ll be able to ask Huggins a basketball related question and he won’t have a spring loaded answer on that to expect. Why? Because this will be the first time he’d done it.
“Can I tell you when it’s done? We’ve never done that before; we’ve never done that anywhere I’ve been before. You’d think after 43-years, you’d know everything,” Huggins said.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. The Mountaineers will host Baylor, TCU and Oklahoma State in that order and there are plenty of different scenarios still at play. Even with only a week left in the Big 12, West Virginia could finish as high as first or drop to sixth depending on what unfolds during that stretch.
How competitive in this league? Regardless which team finishes seventh, they’re a lock for the NCAA Tournament which speaks to how loaded this ten team conference truly is this season.
To finish first, the Mountaineers would need to win all three games, while Baylor would need to lose all three of their contests at West Virginia, at Oklahoma State and at home against Texas Tech. It’s admittedly a long shot, but considering Baylor is coming off a 21-day COVID-19 pause and has to play the Mountaineers in one of those contests you can never say never at this point of the season.
Second place would simply require West Virginia to win two of their final three games.
Lose more than a game and there are many different scenarios that come into play slotting the Mountaineers all across the board heading to Kansas City with the lowest total being sixth. That's a lot of room for variables.
So how will the Mountaineers prepare for this critical stretch? Well, while Huggins hasn’t gone through it himself, he likens it to what he’s seen in conference tournaments over the years.
“Staff stays up late and breaks down the film. We show film the next day, we walk through and jog through what we are and what you want to run offensively. And you go play,” Huggins said.
Because of the limited time between games, the Mountaineers will watch film and dummy through things in order to prepare over the next week. The best thing for West Virginia is that they won’t have to leave the confines of the Coliseum in order to do it.
“It’s huge to have a four-game stretch at home to finish out the season,” junior guard Sean McNeil said.
Outside of conference tournament ramifications, perhaps more importantly will be the impact these three games have on NCAA Tournament seeding. Currently the Mountaineers are locked in as a No. 2 seed in the majority of brackets but understand that closing the year strong with perhaps a 3-0 finish could even project them further up to that one seed territory.
Sitting at 17-6 and 10-4 in the league, there is a ton left on the table and it’s something that the Mountaineers understand that the next week will define how this regular season is remembered.
“I understand that if we sweep our last four games at home, which is a big time test going into tournament time, we should be comfortably on that one line,” junior guard Jordan McCabe said. “That means we beat Baylor and a very good TCU and Oklahoma State teams. Looking down the road, which I don’t like to do too much hypothetically you have to assume we’d be in that conversation. That’s our goal and we don’t have to shy away from it.”
----------
• 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
