MORGANTOWN — Jordan McCabe wasn’t nervous making his first collegiate start Sunday against Lehigh.
He didn’t have enough time.
West Virginia coach Bob Huggins, “told me 10 minutes before the game,” McCabe said with a smile. “Yeah, he gave me a nice cushion to prepare.”
In a season that has already seen a number of lineup and personnel changes, Huggins said starting McCabe at point guard and bringing Beetle Bolden off the bench wasn’t anything more than an experiment and a reward for Bolden.
“The last two days of practice, Jordan was way better than [Brandon] Knapp, so we started him,” Huggins said. “I know as a player, when you play pretty well and kick the guys’ behind who is playing ahead of you and then you don’t get in the game, it’s pretty frustrating. I wanted to reward him for having good practices.”
Bringing Bolden off the bench was sort of the experiment. Huggins wanted to give Bolden an opportunity to get away from all the responsibilities that come with being a point guard and just play.
“Coach told me he needed me for scoring,” Bolden said after West Virginia’s 78-68 win over the Mountain Hawks. “That’s what I focused on mostly. It worked out.”
Bolden played 32 minutes off the bench and while he still handled the ball and ran the offense at different points, he was also 4 of 8 from 3-point range and finished with a game-high 22 points.
In a perfect world, Huggins said he would love to move Bolden from point guard to focus more on playing off the ball.
Part of that, too, is Bolden has played the majority of this season with hand and elbow injuries that are just now starting to fully heal.
“Beetle has played hurt pretty much the whole year,” Huggins said. “He played the first game at Myrtle Beach and then he hurt the same hand again. It’s hard to be a point guard when you don’t have a hand. I think he’ll continue to make strides as a point guard. He had no chance to be a point guard before.”
The question then becomes: Who becomes the point guard if Bolden is moved.
Huggins said there was no easy answer.
“I would like to play Beetle off the ball, but unless we play Jermaine [Haley] at point, I don’t know at this point and time what we’re going to do,” Huggins said. “There’s no reason why Knapp or Jordan aren’t capable of doing it. They just haven’t done it.”
That may have begun to change in the days leading up to the Lehigh game, as McCabe became more assertive in practice.
In West Virginia’s two prior games, McCabe had played a combined eight minutes, but the freshman from Wisconsin said he’s learned quickly that Huggins puts just as much stock from what he sees from his players in practice than from what he sees in games.
“Practice means everything and I knew that coming in,” McCabe said. “It’s really one of the reasons I chose to come here. He rewards the guys who work hard in practice and he’s going to play the guys he trusts, no matter their age or whatever. Generally, it’s the older guys he’ll trust a little more, but I guess you could say this was my start-the-clock moment. I want to show him he can trust me as the lead point guard.”
McCabe performed admirably, scoring five points and adding two assists in 12 minutes.
Huggins said McCabe is not going to be nearly as quick as most of the players he goes up against at this level. That was evident when McCabe chased down a loose ball in the open court, but caught from behind and turned the ball over.
“If that was Beetle, he probably has a lay-up,” Huggins said. “I don’t think Jordan understands sometimes the effort that he has to put forward, because he’s just not as fast as those other guys. And that’s OK, but you have to compensate with something. Generally speaking, I think intelligence is the thing.”
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