West Virginia prepares for style clash with St. John's
The matchup with St. John’s will be a clash of styles for West Virginia.
The Red Storm will be similar to SMU in the sense that they will look to exploit their depth by being physical in the halfcourt while trying to turn the game as high-paced as possible.
“It’s going to be who can impose their will given the circumstances,” head coach Josh Eilert said.
It makes sense to attack the Mountaineers that way given the way that the Mustangs were able to wear them down in the second half outscoring them 45-22 after holding a nine-point lead heading into the halftime.
But it’s up to Eilert and his coaching staff to learn from that experience and avoid falling into some of the same traps that occurred in that contest.
While West Virginia handled the pressure well, the pace of that game saw the Mountaineers getting into more of an up-and-down style of game when it wasn’t necessary. The offense had numbers in several situations but didn’t convert, however, the option was there to pull the pull out and run offense in order to slow down the pace and preserve legs with a seven-to-eight-man rotation.
“We’ve probably got to be very conscious of that and try to learn from our mistakes,” Eilert said.
The first-year head coach doesn’t anticipate St. John’s using a full-out press but putting enough pressure on the ball in order to burn some of the shot clock trying to get it up past the timeline. But over the course of a game that become very taxing to the guards, especially given the depth concerns.
The trick for the Mountaineers will be to simplify the offense so once they do break that pressure they can get right back into their sets and seize back control of the tempo with their offense.
West Virginia is going to have to play steadier and with more poise than they did against SMU because allowing this game to turn into a similar pace is certainly not to their advantage.
“Making sure when we can control the pace we don’t fall in that realm of getting up and down when we don’t need to,” Eilert said.
To accomplish this, Eilert has shown his team some of their shortcomings not only in that game but others including the Bellarmine game where poor shot selection hurt West Virginia. Then on the defensive end, the Mountaineers guarded for the duration of the shot clock and gave up several offensive rebounds to extend those defensive possessions even further.
That stems back to running offense and controlling the game.
“If we can learn from those mistakes and be more efficient on the offensive end and be poised and take care of the ball we’ll have a chance,” Eilert said.
That will be the challenge if West Virginia wants to find a way emerge in a clash of styles.
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