MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — A season that ended prematurely has now developed into a new one with high expectations for the WVU men’s basketball team.
That was according to the Big 12 coaches, which voted the Mountaineers as the third-best team in the league on Thursday, behind only Baylor and Kansas in the Big 12 preseason poll.
The Mountaineers, fresh off a 21-10 season in 2019-20, finished with 61 points, just ahead of Texas (58) and Texas Tech (53).
“We’re grateful that the coaches think highly of us in that ranking,” WVU sophomore guard Deuce McBride said. “Preseason things don’t really matter. I don’t know if my teammates have even seen it yet, but we’d rather be No. 1 at the end of the season. That’s the goal.”
In any other year, preseason predictions are useful for only talking points and headlines, yet this upcoming season is anything but a normal year.
That much the players already know after having the 2020 Big 12 Tournament and NCAA Tournament canceled and then was forced to shut down summer workouts for two weeks in July, as five players and a staff member tested positive for COVID-19.
So, just to have an opportunity to talk predictions and projections is a welcomed change for WVU players.
“I feel like this year will be kind of hectic, honestly,” freshman forward Jalen Bridges said. “They’ve said that if anyone tests positive, you may have to forfeit games. That’s what is being said, but who knows if that will hold up? It’s scary. You never want anything to interfere with your season. We’re kind of taking it a day at a time here.”
So much has changed in the last seven months — except for maybe the coronavirus, itself — down to the Mountaineers’ schedule and the players’ college eligibility.
In the beginning of September, WVU was down to open the season at home against Fairleigh Dickinson on Nov. 10.
Now, WVU will travel to South Dakota to play Texas A&M a day before Thanksgiving.
Other scheduling news: There will be no game against Pitt this season. No trip to New York to play Purdue.
WVU Director of Basketball Operations Josh Eilert, “Did a great job of saving the nonconference schedule for us,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said. “Adding Richmond is going to be really good for us. They’re a heck of a team. Everybody was scrambling. I think with what is happening now with (the multi-team tournaments being canceled) in Florida, everyone is really scrambling. We’re a little bit ahead of everybody else.”
A month ago, Bridges believed this season would be his freshman campaign, but after the Division I Council granted college athletes an extra year of eligibility, Bridges will still be considered a freshman next season, too.
Hectic? That may just have been the perfect word to describe what the Mountaineers will face this season.
“I think the biggest conversations we all had was just to be ready,” McBride said. “I think that’s the only thing us as players can really do.
“It’s kind of like that next-man-up mentality, where you always want to be ready to go. I think we’ve applied that to this season. Football games are being canceled and we’re seeing that. You’d hope it would be cleared by the time basketball starts, but obviously we’re still figuring out scheduling and things like that. Whatever practice time we do get or whoever we do play, we just have to prepare for them and take it day by day.”
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