MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — For the first time since Esa Ahmad’s freshman season, the West Virginia men’s basketball team is not ranked in the Associated Press Top 25.
The Mountaineers (0-1), who fell to Buffalo, 99-94, in the opening week of the season, fell from No. 13 to unranked in the poll released Monday. It’s the first time since November 2015 the Mountaineers are not ranked, a string of 55 consecutive polls that fell two shy of setting a school record.
The school mark of 56 consecutive weeks was set from March 1956 to March 1960, which covers the senior season of “Hot” Rod Hundley to the senior season of Jerry West.
Buffalo moved in at No. 25 and the Mountaineers are the top team among those listed at also receiving votes.
West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said he wasn’t planning to use the national poll as some sort of wake-up call or motivational tool for his team.
“I tried to use the fact that if we stayed ranked in the top 25 for two more weeks, we would have set a school record,” Huggins said Monday during a media call. “We would have broken the record from back in 1956 to 1960. To me, that’s kind of neat. It’s neat that when you finish your career, you can say I was a part of this or that, instead of saying I was a part of a team that won 15 games and people didn’t show up to watch us play.”
Bolden, Konate will keep playing
Body cramps and sore knees are not expected to cut into either Beetle Bolden or Sagaba Konate’s playing time this week, as West Virginia travels to the Myrtle Beach Invitational.
The schedule calls for three games in four days — Saturday is the off day — beginning with Thursday’s 7 p.m. matchup against Monmouth (0-2).
In a perfect world, maybe Bob Huggins would limit the minutes played by his two ailing stars, except the Mountaineers (0-1) are playing so less than perfect at the moment.
“You take those two out and you saw what happened,” Huggins said. “Those two guys have got to play.”
Without Bolden or Konate in the lineup during the final minutes of regulation, Buffalo was able to come back to tie the game and then pull off a 99-94 overtime upset in the season opener.
Bolden, who sat out the final 2:55 of regulation and the entire overtime period, now has severe cramping added to his list of injuries, which also includes a left shooting hand with stretched ligaments.
He finished with 21 points, four rebounds and four assists.
“He got a full-body cramp,” Huggins said. “That kind of shows you [how hard he plays]. We had some other upperclassmen who sure as hell weren’t going to get a cramp.”
Konate has been dealing with a sore knee since the start of preseason practices.
Both players are limited to what they can do in practice, which makes it difficult, Huggins said, in helping them develop into team leaders.
“We’ve got to have some people step up and try to do a better of leading this group,” Huggins said. “I think Beetle will and I think Sags will, but it’s hard to listen to guys who haven’t been in practice.”
Picking an invitational
If not for Hurricane Maria, in 2017, the Mountaineers would be traveling to Puerto Rico today instead of Myrtle Beach.
Damage from the hurricane’s winds to the island forced the tournament to move to Myrtle Beach, where the Mountaineers might have a homefield advantage with a large alumnus base located there.
“I knew we had a lot of fans in Myrtle Beach,” Huggins said. “I didn’t realize the amount of people we actually do have down there.”
As far as picking a November tournament, Huggins said the Mountaineers have an allotment to choose from each season.
“We get recruited to go to multitudes of tournaments,” Huggins said. “Then, Shane [Lyons, WVU A.D.] and I figure out where we’re going to go.
“I try and listen to our boosters and our fans on the places they like to go and the places they enjoy going to.”
In past years, Huggins has sent the Mountaineers to tournaments in Las Vegas, Puerto Rico, Orlando, Fla., Anaheim, Calif. and Cancun.
In choosing a tournament each year, Huggins said travel distance is a top priority, which takes the prestigious Maui Classic in Hawaii out of the picture.
“I don’t want to go to Hawaii, because we travel so much [during the Big 12 season],” Huggins said. “I think that would be a detriment to us. We try to play a little closer to home.
“We could go to Hawaii. We could go to Los Angeles. We could go to wherever. We’re a very sought-after team for those tournaments, but I think we have to be very careful about how much travel we are adding on to what we already are required to make.”
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