West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins didn’t hesitate when asked what his team would do in the wake of shaking up his lineup after the departure of Oscar Tshiebwe.
It was going to open things up more for the rest of his club to stretch the floor with their shooting and they were going to win games. Turns out, both things have happened.
The Mountaineers are 6-3 on the court since that time period with back-to-back wins over ranked teams. That included the first win against a top ten ranked conference opponent since 2010 when Huggins and his team traveled to Lubbock to knock off No. 7 Texas Tech.
West Virginia found a new offensive identity, too. Gone was the two bigs look that often jammed up the lane and made the offense looked as if it was stuck in a time warp. Instead, replaced by a new four-out look that operated with spacing and ball screens allowing junior Derek Culver to work in the paint and getting the shooters around him the ball to get looks at the basket or on the perimeter.
"It gives me a little more freedom coming off ball screens and making reads. I don’t know if I saw it coming. I knew change was going to happen but I didn’t know if we were going to be willing as a program and staff to do that," junior guard Jordan McCabe said.
Over the first nine games since the departure of Tshiebwe, the team has made 85-196 three-pointers. That is 43-percent during that stretch of time. That’s a small sample size, yes, but if it held serve it would put the Mountaineers right at the top of the rankings in that category.
The Mountaineers have taken 36-percent of their attempts from three-point rage during that time.
As far as the ten games before the departure? West Virginia shot 54-178 from deep. That’s 30-percent. Again, small sample size but that falls in somewhere around the 300’s in all of college basketball if that total would have remained there for the course of the year.
The total percentage of their attempts from deep was at 29-percent during that span.
Just for reference, due to the recent stretch the Mountaineers have risen their overall rankings from one of the worst three-point shooting teams in the nation to 37-percent which cements them inside the top 40. That is a significant jump with essentially the same group of players.
That means that West Virginia is taking and making more three-pointers at a higher rate.
Across the board, sophomore guard Miles McBride is shooting 50-percent (19-38), senior guard Taz Sherman is at 43-percent (19-44), junior guard Sean McNeil 22-53 (41.5-percent) and redshirt freshman forward Jalen Bridges at 54-percent (13-24) are all shooting at a high clip over that nine-game stretch.
Beforehand those totals over the first ten games were McBride 37.5-percent (12-32), Sherman 36-percent (12-33), McNeil 34-percent (18-53) and Bridges at 9-percent (1-11).
Bridges’ total can be attributed to the fact that he was used primarily as a reserve before the shakeup with the lineup and has stepped into a much more significant role.
“We’re just playing a different style on offense it’s opened a lot of different looks for guys and playing with more freedom,” McNeil said.
It’s a recipe that seems to be working as the Mountaineers have suddenly unbottled the formula to make shots, which has made them a difficult matchup for every team moving forward. Spacing matters and West Virginia is proof of that.
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