When West Virginia takes the field against Kentucky on Friday in the first game of their regional, the stakes will be heightened, but their approach will be the same.
West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins is excited for the Mountaineers to be headed to the NCAA Tournament this weekend. However, even with him not having experienced managing an NCAA Tournament game, he expects his approach to be the same from how he managed during the regular season.
"I think that's the majority of the thought process, and that's how we played the whole season. Until you clinch a Big 12 title, that changes things quickly.And then you play in a tournament, that changes things quickly. And so I don't have experience managing those things. That was the first time that I've gone through that process, so certainly a learning process for me. But until we did that, clinch a Big 12 title, we really played game by game," Sabins said.
West Virginia was a streaky team throughout the season, opening the season on a 13-game winning streak and then a 14-game winning streak during the middle of the season.
Sabins' focus was on winning the game at hand that day, not having to look ahead to future opponents or the road ahead. That likely changes this weekend, but he doesn't want to change the approach he and his team have taken while having success this season.
"When you played weekend series for the Mountaineers for the first 90 percent of the season, it was, what do we need to do to win today. That is the only concern, only thought, and we were extremely successful with that mindset as a coaching staff. And as you started to have to manage arms and health midweeks down the stretch, already clinching in a tournament, sometimes you can back off a little bit because you know fatigue is a factor later in the season. And I think even that back off from a player's psychological standpoint can sometimes be hard to balance," Sabins said.
Sabins hopes the approach will pay off for West Virginia, as last season he was able to see firsthand how to have success during the regional round of the NCAA Tournament.
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