West Virginia looks to connect, communicate on defense
West Virginia head coach Josh Eilert compared his team to a shooter in a slump.
“We need to see one go in and build some confidence,” he said.
The Mountaineers have dropped five of their last six games to drop to 5-10 overall.
In the last two, it’s been a major struggle on the defensive end with Houston shooting 53 percent from the floor with 48 points in the paint and Kansas State hitting 54 percent with 44 paint points.
It’s hard enough to win in the Big 12, even harder when teams are shooting over 50 percent and scoring the bulk of those points right around the basket. Especially when you consider the struggles on the offensive end with the Mountaineers having difficulty moving the ball and getting easy looks.
Some of the struggles on defense are directly tied to the fact that the fact that West Virginia is currently playing without the only true five on the roster as Jesse Edwards remains out with a fractured left wrist, but the Mountaineers have struggled to communicate and be in the right spots as well.
Against Kansas State, West Virginia had issues with making the right rotations, guys running into hand offs, getting back cut and struggling with defending the pick and roll.
“That’s easy to point at and say we need to correct that, but a lot of that stuff is built in the summer, and you keep on grinding that thing as you go and build into the practice season,” Eilert said. “So, we’re certainly behind on all of that and we haven’t been the same team all year.”
The head coach isn’t wrong as West Virginia played a lot of different lineups and different players. The Mountaineers also played a different defensive style early in the year to try to keep Edwards out of foul trouble and now with new players on the floor it’s simply not clicking, but time helps with that.
That’s made even more difficult by the fact that the Big 12 is filled with skilled bigs and teams are going to force the ball into the paint to try to get easy baskets if it presents itself. It was a concern for Eilert all summer over finding a backup five with Edwards on the floor, without him it’s a major issue.
“It’s even harder when you lose the only give you have out on the floor,” he added.
Guard RaeQuan Battle believes that West Virginia simply just needs to develop better chemistry and buy in as a team in order to execute what is being repped in practice.
And while that seems easy enough, Eilert has felt many times coming out of practice sessions that they are in good position to attack things, but it hasn’t carried over into the games.
“I’ll take a lot of fault in that,” he added.
But there could be light at the end of the tunnel as West Virginia will continue to build chemistry on the floor and eventually Edwards will return to the lineup. Still, finding a way to improve on that end of the floor is a must if this team wants to give itself a chance to win.
“Hopefully we’re playing our best basketball in March. That’s the goal of every team to play their best basketball and continue to get better,” Eilert 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
