West Virginia basketball dealing with another challenge in the flu
The West Virginia basketball team had a rough week for reasons that were rather obvious.
Sophomore forward Oscar Tshiebwe left the team after ten-games and entered the transfer portal, while freshman forward Isaiah Cottrell was lost for the year with an Achilles injury.
Then the program was forced to make a quick turnaround with little time to adjust for two difficult road matchups against Oklahoma and Oklahoma State over a three-day span.
After trailing by double-digits in the second half of each, the Mountaineers rallied and was able to complete the comeback against the Cowboys in Stillwater.
Just when you’d expect the waters to calm by returning to Morgantown with some time off before the next matchup against No. 4 Texas Saturday, there was another curveball.
That’s because two players have the flu, not COVID-19 as both were tested, which has limited just how normal things have been for West Virginia this week. The Mountaineers weren’t able to traditionally practice and instead elected to go through some things in preparation for the Longhorns.
Huggins gave the players Tuesday off and that night was when he got word that the flu had affected a pair of players in the program. That makes a difficult task, imaginably harder.
“The flu can make you pretty sick. We’ve had some guys that are sick. We’re banged up now. We’re not what we were going into last week physically, that’s for sure,” head coach Bob Huggins said. “But they’ll respond. They always do.”
It’s just another hurdle for a team that has been dealing with constant change of late. Throw the pair of players with the flu on top of junior forward Derek Culver and junior guard Sean McNeil being limited by various injuries. McNeil is dealing with a toe that will heal with rest and he has shown some improvement, while Culver is the cumulative effect of how he is defended in the post.
“Derek is more than limping around. Derek’s pretty banged up. And if you look at the film of what happens to him during a game, you’ll understand why he’s so banged up,” Huggins said.
On the plus side of things, West Virginia has not dealt with any issues related to COVID-19. Huggins attributes that to the effort made by his players on that front beginning in the off-season.
“We sit down when they came back and just said ‘fellas this is on you. If you’re going to run downtown or hang out at parties or have people around you that you don’t know then we’re going to have a miserable season and you’re going to have a miserable season’,” Huggins said.
But other hurdles have arisen and this is just the latest with the bouts of the flu. It’s not the way that West Virginia wanted to end a tumultuous week, but it’s just become the normal this season as teams have had to adjust to things on the fly.
“We’re banged up and there’s no if, ands or buts about it,” Huggins said.
----------
• 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, @JaredSerre
•Like us on Facebook
