HUNTINGTON Ƶ After playing five of its first six Sun Belt Conference games at home, the Marshall menƵs basketball team is headed west for a tw…
From
To
Marshall guard Taevion Kinsey will make his 100th career start for the Thundering Herd during the team's home opener at 7 p.m. on Monday against Tennessee Tech. Kinsey is Marshall's fifth all-time leading scorer and is just 64 points from becoming the program's fourth player to reach 2,000 points for their career.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (Ƶ News) Ƶ The great songwriter George Gershwin captured the mood of summertime better than anyone before or since when he started his classic aria from the opera Porgy and Bess this way:
Summertime,
and the living is easy
fish are jumpin'
and the cotton is high
You could almost feel the heat of summer hanging heavily on you. Like, not much to do, not much you want to do.
Maybe run out to the lake or the creek and catch you some fish, but you ain't gonna involve yourself in pickin' cotton, because well, it was summertime.
Vacation. School is out. Just lay back, work on that tan, have a beer if you are old enough, an iced tea if not. Sleep in and stay out late.
Sounds good, but what if you are in a college town, what if you are a coach, an athlete or, of all things, a sportswriter.
They are playing no games. Ƶ an athlete you may grunt in the weight room or conduct your own informal workouts, spending time on timing, working on bonding as a team.
Yeah, the living is easy, all right.
Ƶ a coach or sportswriter, though, your brain is working overtime. The coach is putting together his plans for the coming season, the sportswriter trying to figure out what those plans will be.
No, that may not be pickin' cotton, but it ain't easy, either.
Especially true with Bob Huggins and his basketball team, where so many players have moved into a new environment that Huggins has to feel like a golf course architect with nothing but a tract of land before him, that out of which he has to one up Mother Nature and take her creation and turn it into a beautiful, yet challenging, test of golf.
With his roster and schedule now complete, he is in his creative mode and that got me to thinking the other day of just what his team will look like. It also got me to thinking what you thought he might have on his hands.
So, we put out a quickie poll on Twitter and Facebook asking who you thought would be his leading scorer. Normally, that is not a problem, but this coming season everything is so new that it isn't clear where the points are going to come from because it isn't clear what kind of offense will be run.
There is no Da'Sean Butler, no Deuce McBride, no Taz Sherman. There is no go-to guy to take the buzzer beater, no one player that the defense must focus on.
Eight of the top nine scorers from last season are gone. Kedrian Johnson, the point guard, is the top returning scorer. He averaged only 5.3 points per game. Next up among returning players is sophomore guard Seth Wilson, who averaged 1.9.
Not much to go on, but the freshman class is strong and the group of transfers is among the nation's best.
So, who will be the leading scorer?
This was the Twitter poll: Emmitt Matthews Jr. 33.5%, Tre Mitchell 30.4%, Erik Stevenson 24.1% and Seth Wilson 12%.
The Facebook poll wasn't much different: Matthews Jr. 48%, Mitchell 20%, Stevenson 26% and Wilson 5%.
What this says is that a lot is expected from Matthews Jr., who played his first three years at ƵU, transferred home to the University of Washington in the Pac-12 last year, and now returns for his last season of eligibility.
Matthews Jr. has averaged around 11 points a game for his last couple of seasons, is capable of hitting a corner 3 but mostly is a slasher.
This says a lot after Huggins tried to build his team around 3-point shooters last year and found it did not fit his style or his mentality.
What this poll said is what Huggins has hinted at as he put this team together Ƶ this will be a physical, defensive, aggressive team.
The last two years his teams have not be able to score around the basket out of the set offense or in transition.
The emphasis this year is going to be on defense and rebounding as a means of turning it into offense. Huggins brought in a group of big men Ƶ Jimmy Bell, Mohamed Wague and Pat Suemnick Ƶ who he believes can rebound and score points in close while protecting the rim.
But the man who may Ƶ with Matthews Jr. and Mitchell, the Texas transfer Ƶ hold the key to what this team's personality will be about is James Okonkwo, a 6-8 player who came to ƵU two years before they thought he would but sat out almost all of last season with injury.
All season long Huggins raved about what he saw from Okonkwo in practice, about how he was the team's best rebounder.
"He shocked me. He was a lot better than what I saw on film," Huggins said early in the year, right after he was injured. "The way he was playing before he got hurt, he was going to play.
"He's quicker off the floor than our other guys. The plan all along was to redshirt him. That's what his dad wants and that was kind of his mindset going in."
Now he's ready to go and he adds an element that was lacking in last year's team.
This year Huggins goes into the season looking to take a giant step forward by taking a step back, becoming the kind of team that he always has done best with, that being a physical, intimidating team.
ƵWe didnƵt and couldnƵt rebound the ball a year ago. We didnƵt guard anybody a year ago. I think if we can do those things, we are going to be a much, much better basketball team," Huggins said.
"Plus, we couldnƵt throw the ball close (to the basket). Through the years, one of the strengths of my teams is that we could throw the ball close when you need a basket.
ƵWith the guys we have now, I think we are going to be able to throw it close and score.Ƶ
What's more, a year ago his guards were gunners in Taz Sherman, Malik Curry and Sean McNeal. This year with the two Johnsons Ƶ Kobe and Kedrian Ƶ returning and joined by transfers Joe Toussaint and Erik Stevenson, he has the kind of players who can handle the ball and set things up near the basket.
BOONE COUNTY Ƶ One retuning player of the year and a 1,000-point career scorer lead the 2021-22 Coal Valley News All-Boone County basketball teams.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (Ƶ News) Ƶ West Virginia entered the season expecting the scoring load would fall squarely on the shoulders of their two veteran outside shooters, Taz Sherman and Sean McNeil.
But as the regular season draws down to its final two games with West Virginia playing at 7 p.m. Tuesday night at Oklahoma on ESPN2 and then celebrating Senior Night at home on Saturday against TCU, two other senior players who come off the bench have emerged as the go-to scorers.
Old Dominion transfer Malik Curry, who was picked up late in the recruiting process when Deuce McBride entered the NBA draft, has been the Mountaineers most dangerous scorer over the past two games, scoring 19 and 27.
Along with him, the senior transfer from Arkansas, Gabe Osabuohien, a player known to be among the league's top defenders but who entered the year considered an offensive liability, has emerged a force driving to the basket, scoring 19 and 12.
This has given ƵU a completely different look, although the results have not changed. Despite scoring 81 points in each of the last two games against Iowa State and Texas, both were losses.
ƵU has now lost 13 of its last 14 games, falling below .500 for the season at 14-15, which seemingly leaves them only one path to the NCAA tournament. To do that they will have to not only win a wild card game to get into the Big 12 Tournament, but then beat Kansas.
Ƶ for Sherman and McNeil, their seasons have deteriorated. Sherman has had to fight through a bout with COVID along with a concussion, both of which place an asterisk by his season.
And McNeil has, for some reason, become hesitant to shoot.
Sherman still is the Mountaineers' top scorer with an 18.3 average but has hit just 11 of his last 32 shots while McNeil has only 20 points combined over the last three games and has attempted only 16 shots during that span.
Four games back McNeil shot 18 times alone in scoring 16 points against Kansas.
But over these two games the offense has not been the concern, each game ending with with Curry getting a good look at the basket for a game-winner. This last game against Texas the ball went down and spun out on him.
"If that ball goes an inch further, we win," Huggins said. "He had a good shot and he was the guy who was making shots."
"I feel like that was the best shot I could get in the moment," Curry said. "It was a good shot. I just have to make the shot."
But that's the kind of year this has been, with ƵU blowing double-digit leads in the second half of each of the last two games to suffer crushing defeats
The truth is that it's been the defense, not the offense, that has kept ƵU from winning games this season, especially lately.
"We're not as good as we've been in the past defensively," Huggins admitted. "We don't have a rim protector like we did before. We kind of got spoiled with the guys we had protecting the rim.
"You can't continue to let people shoot 60%."
Over the last two games, ƵU has allowed opponents to shoot 58.8% from the field, making 53 of 90 shots. Texas shot at 63.4% from the field.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (Ƶ News) Ƶ West Virginia's football team will get more primetime exposure than Yellowstone or its sister show, 1883, this year Ƶ or so it seems, since the two road rivalry games at Pitt and Virginia Tech have been moved to Thursday nights.
With the Baylor home game already scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 13, that makes three primetime Thursday games.
The Pitt opener at Heinz Field has been moved from Saturday, Sept. 3, to Sept. 1, and the fourth game at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg from Sept. 24 to Sept. 22.
On the surface, that seems to be a good move for ƵU ... primetime national eyes never hurt a program Ƶ but there is some question.
To begin, early September fall days normally produce a wonderful setting for football in this area, and there is something about the tradition of college football games being played on Saturdays that makes them special.
Certainly not everyone wants to go to Thursday nights, which ƵU had a lot of back in its Big East days.
One member of social media, when the annual Blue-Gold Spring game was announced for Saturday, April 23, at 1 p.m. at Mountaineer Field, offered up this critique:
"Why not on Thursday so we can get used to watching Thursday games! This is a crap schedule."
While the Thursday night opener at Pitt doesn't present much in the way of inconvenience, the move of the Virginia Tech game does mess with a lot of plans. From this part of the state, you don't just get off work early on Thursday and drive to Blacksburg for the game and then drive home after it.
It has to be an overnight trip, which is especially troublesome with Friday being a work day.
But you can bet the house will fill up in Blacksburg no matter when they play it and that Heinz Field won't fill up, although coming off an ACC championship, Pitt's support might be stronger than normal. You used to be able to count on there being more ƵU fans in the stands than those rooting for the hometown Panthers.
Us old timers still have a problem accepting Thursday night college football, just as we long for Thanksgiving high school rivalry games to be played and NFL games to be played on Sundays.
---
While we're on football, there's been big news on the NIL front.
ƵU's defensive tackle Dante Stills, who surprised a lot of people by deciding to return for his super senior year, is taking advantage of it by becoming associated with Mario's Fishbowl in Morgantown.
He announced the relationship on social media.
"I'm excited to announce my partnership with @Fishbowl_Ƶ They are a great locally owned business and have the best wings and sandwiches in town. If you havenƵt ate here yet, check them out."
I mention this not to sell wings, but there is some nostalgia there, for it was there that I covered one of my favorite sporting events.
One of my friends in my early days in Morgantown and a group of four of his friends had been in training most of their outdoor lives to take at the restaurant's record for consuming "fishbowls," as they call their large beer mugs.
All I can tell you about it is the record fell that day, as did a number of them, right to their knees ... but it made a neat column.
---
Also on the NIL front, ƵU defensive back Charles Woods has become the first client of Ken Kendrick and Oliver Luck's "Country Roads Trust," set up to pair Mountaineer athletes Ƶ male and female Ƶ with local companies or promotional opportunities such as autograph sessions, podcasts and the like.
---
With ƵU's basketball fortunes slipping away rapidly, and with Taz Sherman's availability unknown after leaving Tuesday night's game at Baylor with a head injury, Bob Huggins has got to find a way to make sure he gets his two freshman guards -- Kobe Johnson and Seth Wilson -- more playing time.
Wilson hit a couple of 3s in the Baylor game, and Huggins has said that he has been impressive shooting the ball in practice.
The truth is that if Sherman does get back right away, there is a need to give Sean McNeil some time off. He plays almost every minute of every game, leads the Big 12 in minutes played and was in for 39 of the 40 minutes at Baylor.
While he hit the most incredible 3-point shot of the season in that game, falling toward the baseline while on the dead run as the shot clock went down to its last tick, he would benefit by getting some rest.
It's just awfully hard to do it when you aren't scoring points, McNeil potentially being a 20-point producer in any game ... but playing the kids now with the situation ƵU finds itself in could pay off by keeping them on hand next year, rather than transferring.
---
The last thing Mike Carey needed to have happen to his ƵU women's basketball team has happened. Trying to make a stretch run to the NCAA Tournament, Carey lost his top scorer, KK Deans, to a season-ending knee injury.
Dean was averaging 14.5 points a game and was the leading scorer in 10 of the team's 18 games.
The Mountaineers play at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in Fort Worth, Texas, against TCU. They 10-8 overall and 3-5 in Big 12 play.
---
Finally, the Pirates are about to open their own Hall of Fame in August and have picked the best possible man to run it, their long-time PR man, Jim Trdinich, who becomes the team's first historian. His wife, Michelle, is a ƵU graduate.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (Ƶ News) Ƶ West Virginia is playing at Texas Tech, a physical, emotional, critical game. It's close late and coach Bob Huggins is in his huddle during a time out, drawing up a play on the clip board.
It is, he is to say, a play they worked on for two days in practice. It is a play they talked about during the pre-game.
They break the huddle and go out on the floor.
Huggins settles onto his stool and expects to see the play he wanted.
They don't run it.
And that's how it's been for West Virginia, at least in Huggins' eyes. He says it's what he watched on Saturday when Texas Tech saved its best for last while ƵU came undone down the stretch again and lost a third straight game to a Top 20 team, 78-68.
Huggins, now 2-5 in the Big 12, is flummoxed by it all.
Huggins was asked about the sloppy play, about 17 turnovers, most of them unforced. How could that be happening?
"Now that you bring that up, we didn't run what we practiced we were going to run," Huggins said, setting off alarm bells everywhere.
If anything, Huggins has always been painted a stern disciplinarian, a man who set the rules and it was his way or the highway.
And now he was saying that he would call a play or work things out in practice and his team wasn't following those directions?
"We worked on a set that I saw Texas Tech struggle to defend and we didn't run it one time," he said. "I told them and I drew it up on the clipboard. They didn't run it one time."
The obvious question is why?
"They just don't run it," Huggins answered. "I don't know how to say it any different than that. I don't why it doesn't happen. Probably, the truth be known, I've given them too much rope. I've let them screw up and tried to calmly fix it.
"The reality of it is, it's like anything else. In any line of work, if you continue not to do what you're asked to do you are probably asked to leave."
The inference was that it's no more Mr. Nice Guy.
And this team may need that. It is young. And, it is being bullied on the boards, giving up 17 offensive rebounds while getting only 8. In the paint, the Mountaineers were outscored 30-16.
That's as atypical as a Huggins team can get. Now its true over the past few years Huggins has lost the likes of Sagaba Konate, Oscar Tshiebwe and Derek Culver, players who can spoil you, but they have to find a way to make up what they have lost with them.
Make no doubt that Huggins isn't happy. He spent a full half hour with his team in the locker room before coming out for his radio show and then his media session.
The thing was, his team had played bravely through most of the game. It had played a lot of 1-2-2 zone, something it had not shown all year to take advantage of Texas Tech's perceived inability to hit from the outside and when Taz Sherman hit a 3 with 6:05 to play the Mountaineers had a 54-53 lead.
That gave Sherman 21 points, which was a sign that he is shaking off the effects of a bout with COVID-19, but they wound up being his final points of the game.
From that point on, the defense broke down and the Red Raiders outscored ƵU 11-2 to take command of the game.
Huggins now has to put it all back together.
"The leadership has got to start with me. I've done it before, so I think I can do it again. We may be minus a few of them, but we're going to compete again. We had stretches where we competed, but not for an entire game. We haven't competed for an entire game yet this year."
Texas Tech was led by Terrance Shannon Jr. with 23 points and Kevin Obanor had.
ƵU's only double-figure scorer other than Sherman was Malik Curry, one of four Mountaineers to foul out, with 11 points while Tech did a solid job on Sean McNeil, who finished with just 7 points.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (Ƶ News) Ƶ The good news for Bob Huggins and his 2021-22 West Virginia basketball team is that Taz Sherman is carrying the scoring load for his team.
There is, however, one potential problem with that.
He has to.
While Huggins has developed a three-headed monster at point guard in Kedrian Johnson, Malik Curry and Kobe Johnson, he has only one scorer in Taz Sherman.
While Huggins has developed a three-headed, maybe four-headed monster down low with Gabe Osabuohien, Isaiah Cottrell, Pauly Paulicap and Dimon Carrigan, he still has only one scorer in Taz Sherman.
With Sean McNeil not shooting well yet this year the way he did a year ago , the entire scoring load has fallen upon Sherman.
It isn't something planned on.
The question then is, is ƵU relying too heavily on Sherman's scoring.
"I don't think we had any choice," Huggins answered following ƵU's Saturday afternoon's victory over Radford. "We have to."
The box scores offer proof of just how out of whack the Mountaineers' reliance on Sherman for points has become.
For the season, he has scored 168 points, exactly twice as many as his backcourt partner Sean McNeil, who missed the Radford game with a bad lower back. That put even more pressure on Sherman to score.
"When we found out McNeil wasn't playing, we said we have to guard (Sherman) with other guys, guys who were on players who weren't shot makers. We knew Taz would turn it up," former ƵU point guard Darris Nichols, Radford's coach, said.
Sherman delivered with 27 points Ƶ his 21 in the first half equaling the total of all other Mountaineer players combined Ƶ and finished the game as the only double-figure scorer for ƵU. In fact, you add together the totals of the next FOUR West Virginia scorers and they add up to just 24 points, three fewer than Sherman scored.
Sherman has led ƵU in points in all but two of the eight games played to date. He was outscored by one by Jalen Bridges against Pitt and by three by McNeil against Clemson.
If McNeil is out for an extended period, or continues to shoot at 39.5% from the field, opponents will begin devising defenses aimed at stopping Sherman ... and beginning with Wednesday's game against Connecticut, it only gets tougher and tougher as the year proceeds toward and into Big 12 Conference play.
This, of course, is why it has been so important for Huggins to get as many of his young or new players experience early, capping it off by getting a first look at the athletically gifted James Okonkwo in the Radford game.
Huggins believes he has a future star in the talented Okwonko, but he is young, inexperienced and coming off injury.
Okwonko comes to ƵU from England and is athletic enough that Huggins believes he had to get him in there and break his redshirt sooner than later, especially with the fluid nature of college sports today.
But, in the end, the spotlight falls upon Sherman, whose performance impressed Nichols.
"Seeing him last year when I was at Florida to this year, I think he's spent the summer really working on his overall game," Nichols said. "Last year he was more a catch and shoot man. Now he's putting it on the floor a little more. The big thing with him is you have to stay disciplined when you guard him because he's really good with the shot fakes, pre-bounce and post-bounce.
"He's gotten so much better. You can tell he's a gym rat because his game has vastly improved from a year ago."
Still, Huggins doesn't believe he's come close to reaching his full potential or cinched an NBA career.
"I think it's way too early to judge how much he has improved his future career yet," Huggins said. "I can say this. We've had years when there were a lot of pro scouts who came walking through that door downstairs at the facility.
"We haven't had any (this year). Well, we did have one walk in but he was a Cincinnati guy and he just wanted to say hi. It's not like it was when we had Da'Sean Butler and Devin Ebanks, or even when we had Sagaba Konate and when we had Jevon Carter and Daxter Miles.
"There were people coming through, then. Now, there's nobody coming through."
That sounded somewhat surprising, considering the start Sherman has gotten off to this season.
Now we have to take a time out here to emphasize that Huggins understands his players and he knows that they can get content with a bit of success, so what he was about to say may well have been as much for Sherman's and his players' consumption as it was for the public's as ƵU heads into the heart of season.
"What has anyone here done to warrant scouts to come here," he said.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. Ƶ Moments after the West Virginia menƵs basketball team trotted off the ƵU Coliseum court with a 67-51 victory over Radford on Saturday, the HighlandersƵ first-year head coach stepped into West VirginiaƵs locker room and provided the Mountaineers with some words of wisdom.
Normally such a speech from the opposing head coach would be very unusual, but normally the opposing head coach isnƵt a former ƵU star, as is RUƵs leader, Darris Nichols.
Never before had West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins faced off against an opposing head coach who had also played for him, and Nichols is just the second former Mountaineer to bring his team into the 52-year-old ƵU Coliseum. (The other being Purdue in 1975 with Fred Schaus as the BoilermakersƵ head coach.)
Nichols had been in the same spot as the current Mountaineer players, having been a senior at West Virginia in the 2006-07 season, which was HugginsƵ first as ƵUƵs head coach.
ƵI told them I donƵt know what Huggs is going to come in here and say,Ƶ said Nichols of his postgame talk to the Mountaineers. ƵHeƵs probably disappointed; I know him. The thing I learned about playing for Huggs is if you listen to the tone rather than listen to the message, you have no chance.
ƵThis is a dude who helped me get where I am, changed my life, so I know. Whatever he is telling you is probably Ƶ not probably Ƶ it is the truth. The only way you are going to get better is if you can accept the truth.
ƵI donƵt know; I think they appreciated me coming in there,Ƶ he concluded. ƵI just think they may have needed to hear it from somebody else who went through it.Ƶ
Huggins wasnƵt necessarily pleased with his teamƵs performance against the Highlanders (4-5). ƵU did lead from wire-to-wire, holding an advantage that was as large as 27 points before walking away with a 16-point victory to improve its record to 7-1.
The win was No. 907 in HugginsƵ coaching career and No. 317 with the Mountaineers.
Nichols was there for triumph No. 1 at West Virginia Ƶ Arkansas-Monticello, 81-53, on Nov. 16, 2007. Darris had eight points, five assists and six rebounds in that contest in a 141-game ƵU career that brought him 993 points, 399 assists and just 135 turnovers (heƵs still first in Mountaineer history in assist-to-turnover ratio at 2.96:1).
West VirginiaƵs former point guard says some things have changed under Huggins since then, but not the basics.
ƵWhen you play against one of HuggsƵ teams, you know what to prepare for before you even look at them,Ƶ explained Nichols. ƵYou have to be ready to be physical on the defensive glass and you have to take care of the ball.
ƵHe has changed some things,Ƶ continued the 35-year-old Nichols, who also began his coaching career at ƵU as a graduate assistant in the 2010-11 season before moving into full-time assistant roles at Northern Kentucky (2011-13), Wofford (2013-14), Louisiana Tech (2014-15) and Florida (2015-21) culminating with the head coaching position at Radford. ƵObviously, heƵs added some different stuff. But for the majority of it, you know what you have to prepare for.Ƶ
The scouting report is a constant for HugginsƵ teams, including rebounding (ƵU won that area Saturday 33-31) and strong defense (Radford made just 20 of its 50 field goal attempts, and no Highlander had more than nine points).
Turnovers also were a problem for RU.
ƵWeƵve been plagued by too many turnovers so far this year, and that was a problem again today,Ƶ acknowledged RadfordƵs head coach. ƵWe had too many turnovers that led to what we call ƵtouchdownsƵ.Ƶ RU lost the turnover battle against West Virginia 20-11 and thus lost the points-off-turnover category 31-12.
One difference for the Mountaineers on Saturday was they were without their second-leading scorer in Sean McNeil (12.0 points per game), who was confined to the bench with a back injury.
That put more of the scoring burden on ƵUƵs leading scorer, Taz Sherman (21.0 ppg), and the senior guard responded by pumping in 27 points while making nine of his 17 field goal attempts. ItƵs the fourth time in West VirginiaƵs eight games so far this season that Sherman has scored 20 or more points.
ƵWhen we found out McNeil wasnƵt playing, we knew that Taz was definitely going to step it up, and thatƵs exactly what he did,Ƶ noted Nichols. ƵHe made some tough shots. They have a lot of guys who can drive you and spread you out, and thatƵs what we were trying to prepare for Ƶ limit their opportunities to get to the paint, but they did a good job of getting to the paint.Ƶ