If West Virginia wants to attempt to win its first Big 12 Conference title and secure a high-seed in the NCAA Tournament, they have to first beat who’s in front of them on the schedule.
The next team in the Mountaineers path is Kansas State, the team that shared the conference crown with Texas Tech a season ago but is off to an 0-4 start in the league and 7-9 overall record this year.
But this is a much different club after the graduations of experienced veterans Dean Wade, Barry Brown and Kamau Stokes with only a handful of players returning.
Two of those returning players currently are the leading scorers for the Wildcats with Xavier Sneed at 14.6 points per game and Carter Diarra at 12.6 per contest, those are the only double-digit scorers for the club.
“They’re playing a bunch of young guys. They lost a lot if you look the people they lost, they lost two of the best players that played there probably ever,” head coach Bob Huggins said.
Despite the early struggles, the Wildcats have been competitive in conference and have done an impressive job defending at times ranking 55th nationally in efficiency in that department.
“Pretty much a typical Bruce Weber team. They do a great job of guarding,” he said.
That’s a trait that has been rampant across seemingly the entire conference this season as the Big 12 as essentially morphed from a wide open, run and shoot league to one that’s been decided in the half court. The defenses haven’t been extended as in the past, making it more of a five on five situation in the half court which naturally makes it harder to put the ball in the basket.
It’s also resulted in a fewer possessions and if you couple that with moving the three-point line back, it’s easy to see why defense has been front and center.
Huggins has been encouraged by how his team has handled themselves at this point of the season and how they have stuck together on and off the court.
“They want to be a team,” he said.
Tip-off is set for 2 p.m. with the Mountaineers looking to go to 4-1 in the Big 12 for the first time since the 2017-18 basketball season.
WATCH: Musings from the Mountains | West Virginia Football | Episode 57
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