Huggins doesn’t expect No. 12 West Virginia to overlook Kansas State

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — West Virginia will walk into Bramlage Coliseum at 2 p.m. Saturday armed with the Big 12’s top defense and an offense coming off its best performance of the season in a 32-point win against TCU.

Meanwhile, Kansas State (7-9, 0-4 Big 12) has yet to win a Big 12 game this season.
Even with the knowledge that the 12th-ranked Mountaineers (14-2, 3-1) are still one of the youngest teams in the conference, with a roster filled with seven freshman and sophomores in the rotation, WVU head coach Bob Huggins said overlooking the Wildcats wasn’t a major concern.

“If you want to win the league, like our guys say they do, that’s one of their goals and to get a high seed in the (NCAA) tournament, then you have to beat who is in front of you,” Huggins said. “Kansas State is our next game. We’ve had plenty of time to get over the TCU game. It’s also a totally different style that we have to get ready for.”

Huggins points out Kansas State’s defensive numbers aren’t as bad as the Wildcats’ record would make you believe.

K-State allows just 62 points per game and only three teams have scored more than 70 against the Wildcats.

“They do a good job of guarding and they run good offense,” Huggins said. “They’re fundamentally very sound and hard to score on. They don’t give you anything easy.”

Since coming off a 15-21 record last season, the Mountaineers’ rise up the rankings to national respect hasn’t been easy, either.

The Mountaineers didn’t start receiving votes in the AP poll until the third week of the season and didn’t crack the top 25 until Dec. 16.

Yet, WVU players never bought into the underdog role.

Even on a trip to Cleveland to face then No. 2-ranked Ohio State, players said after the 67-59 victory they had the belief they were the better team after digesting film of the Buckeyes.

They felt underrated, Huggins said, but never like the underdog.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a confidence problem,” Huggins said. “These guys basically played together a year ago and had a little bit of success. They knew what was coming. They beat the national runner-up (Texas Tech) in the conference tournament.

“They’ve been together all summer and they understand what each one of them can do. I don’t think confidence has ever been a problem.”

Now it becomes a matter of simply taking care of business.

WVU will likely be the betting favorite in six of its next seven games — only a road trip to No. 23 Texas Tech on Jan. 29 — could keep it from a straight seven.

That would set up WVU’s rematch against No. 6 Kansas, which travels to the WVU Coliseum on Feb. 12, before the first of two games against No. 2 Baylor.

That is looking ahead, though, something the Mountaineers can’t afford to do against the Wildcats, who erased a 21-point deficit to pull out a 71-69 victory against WVU at Bramlage Coliseum last season.

“They haven’t shot the ball well in their losses,” Huggins said of K-State, which graduated four seniors from a 25-9 team that tied for the 2018-19 Big 12 regular-season title. “They’re playing a bunch of young guys, because they lost a lot. You look at the people they lost; they lost two of the best players who maybe played there ever.”

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