The West Virginia basketball team is ready to get back into action.

The Mountaineers last played against Kansas Dec. 22 and then took a break in order to allow the players to return home to their families for the holidays. After the Buffalo game was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns, the program was able to secure a match up with Northeastern.

Now, after all testing has come back negative with the entire team, West Virginia is ready to resume things on the hardwood after a series of hard practices following a disappointing effort against Kansas.

“We’ve gone hard the last couple days. We’ve really emphasized rebounding the basketball, we emphasized things defensively,” head coach Bob Huggins said.

While many other teams across the college basketball landscape have been foregoing chances to make up non-conference games, West Virginia has embraced the opportunity. There is a reason that Huggins felt that this game was important to get rescheduled with a non-conference opponent.

“We haven’t played those young guys very much. Those guys need to play. The more we get them into games, the better they’re going to be. The readier they’re going to be to play. I think our strength is in our numbers and we haven’t used that,” Huggins said.

Some of that is on Huggins for not trusting his younger players in large part because of their lack of experience, but the players that are playing shoulder some of the blame as well. That’s because the Mountaineers have largely struggled to put teams away and games have remained competitive.

“Quite frankly we haven’t really played 40 minutes yet. We’ve played for a little while and let them catch up and then we play for a while again. We really haven’t had the opportunity to play as many guys as we normally would this time of the year,” he said.

That alone was incentive to get this game scheduled but it also gives the Mountaineers another chance to gel on the court after not having the benefit of an exhibition game or any closed scrimmages.

Among those players that Huggins wants to get into the game is freshman Isaiah Cottrell, who is a skilled big man but hasn’t been able to see the floor much because of the way the games have unfolded. The plan is to try to change that starting with this game.

“He can make shots and pass the ball. He’s our most skilled big,” Huggins said. “We’ve got to get him on the floor more.”

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