The story of West Virginia’s defense is told with many moving parts

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — John Calipari’s call to Bob Huggins was nothing out of the unusual. The two good friends speak to each other randomly during each season.

Except this time the Kentucky head coach hit Huggins with his own prediction:

“I said, ‘Geez, you’ve got rebounding, your toughness, your defense, your scoring,’ ” Calipari said during Thursday’s SEC media call. “I said, ‘Bob, you guys could do this.’ ”

This being winning a national championship, which coming from Calipari … “That’s the kiss of death,” Huggins joked a day later when relaying the story. “The day I start listening to John is when I know it’s time to retire.”

Needing just one more victory to tie Kentucky legend Adolph Rupp for seventh place on the all-time Division I list with 876 wins, Huggins is likely not considering hanging up his clipboard anytime soon.

If the 14th-ranked Mountaineers (15-3, 4-2 Big 12) are to make a run, they will do so on the strength of their defense, which was the other thing Calipari called to talk about.

“He asked me why I was going back to the defense we played at Cincinnati?” Huggins said.

That answer comes in many moving parts.

Truth is, Huggins began this season not even seriously considering it.

“What we had at Cincinnati was a good group of athletes,” Huggins said. “Maybe not the best shooters or maybe not all of best skilled guys, but guys who could run and defend and get after it.”

It’s at this point Huggins pauses for a moment and looks out at WVU forward Derek Culver and his 6-foot-10, 255-pound frame.

“Like him,” Huggins said.

WVU will host Missouri (9-9, 1-5 SEC) at noon Saturday in the annual Big 12/SEC Challenge, with the hopes of suffocating the Tigers defensively without fouling them.

Missouri leads the SEC with its 77.4 shooting percentage from the line and has gone 56 of 57 from the foul line in its last two games.

“No, you don’t foul them,” Huggins said. “We probably will, but we shouldn’t.”

As for the Mountaineers’ defense, Huggins knew with Culver and freshman Oscar Tshiebwe that WVU had a big and athletic front line.

Always known as a man-to-man disciple, Huggins admitted he toyed with the idea of developing a zone defense to keep the two forwards closer to the rim.

“That’s pretty much done with now,” he said.

Instead of protecting them, Huggins instead unleahed Culver, allowing him to show his versatility and athleticism by guarding smaller players on the perimeter.

“When you think about it, when we were playing our buy games, he was guarding (power forwards) who would be pretty much (shooting guards) in our league,” Huggins said.

Still, Huggins said something wasn’t quite right, which is when he decided to scrap Plan A and go back to his days with the Bearcats.

“I told them one day in practice that I was trying to make this as easy as I could,” he said. “I said, “Now, we’re going to go back to what I know.’ ”

Instead of five individual defenders, Huggins stressed speed and athleticism.

Help defense — the art of coming off an offensive player to help out in another area — became a staple again.

A season ago, WVU couldn’t solve ball screens and guards driving to the basket.

Huggins credits assistant Ron Everhart for devising a plan this season to correct those mistakes.

The results: WVU is allowing 17 points less per game and is ranked No. 2 nationally in 3-point field-goal defense.

Huggins added WVU could get better.

“Our rotations are getting better, but they’re still not what they need to be,” Huggins said. “We still rotate behind instead of in the front, which are some things that ought to be a lot easier to fix than what they’ve been.”

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