When the West Virginia basketball team takes the floor against Kansas State Saturday, the Mountaineers will be at full strength. At least in terms of the personnel available.
After being down leading scorer Taz Sherman and key pieces in forward Gabe Osabuohien and guard Kobe Johnson in the loss to Texas due to COVID-19 protocols, each are expected to be available. Although admittedly each of them have practiced very little upon returning.
Still, head coach Bob Huggins doesn’t look at that as a major issue.
“Those guys have played enough and been around enough that they’ll tell me,” Huggins said of possible limitations. “They’ll tell me when they need a break.”
There are no other issues on the team right now, which is a positive sign considering the havoc that the virus has caused for college basketball programs across the country.
It’s a difficult reality, but one that college basketball programs are going to have to adjust to over the rest of the 2022 schedule. It does make things challenging for teams especially when the virus causes breaks in the schedule as it did when TCU was dealing with their own COVID-19 issues earlier this week. Then comes balancing your own roster and trying to get players up to speed after missing time.
“It’s been hard when you take guys out and you’re supposed to like stick them right back in immediately and then you have guys you really have to monitor minutes,” Huggins said. “We’ve had it maybe once or twice before but I don’t know if we’ve had it to this degree.”
Sherman, who averages 20.9 points per game, is a difficult piece to replace in the lineup and forced some others to step up against Texas such as Jalen Bridges. But the one positive from those players being out was it allowed some of the younger guys to get more attention in practice.
“When we didn’t have the guys we normally would have had in there,” Huggins said.
Huggins admitted that the team is very eager to return to the floor to compete after being off for an entire week and it likens the experience to children wanting to desperately open their gifts on Christmas and parents trying to keep them distracted from it.
Still, while the health and safety of all involved takes the centerstage in these issues but the Mountaineers are ready to get back on the floor and resume the season.
“We’ve got a whole lot of guys that can’t wait until we start playing again,” Huggins said.
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