West Virginia must run better offense in order to get other players involved

MORGANTOWN — After already pulling a rabbit from its hat with a victory against No. 15 Connecticut, West Virginia’s next trick may be simply getting its offense in order.

The Mountaineers (8-1) can continue to move toward national prominence by not falling flat Sunday against underdog Kent State (5-3) at the WVU Coliseum.

That in itself is a concern said WVU head coach Bob Huggins, who wonders how his players will respond after the high of beating the nationally-ranked Huskies.

“You worry about that anytime,” Huggins said. “A lot of our guys our older, but they haven’t played at this level. There’s a difference in competition.”

WVU STATS

There has been a difference in the Mountaineers’ offensive strategy, too, Huggins said, although its one WVU coaches work on a daily basis to fix.

WVU has yet to see five players on the court all moving in unison and working together.

“I’ve missed that we were all moving and running around,” Huggins began. “If you could tell me, I’d like to watch. We just don’t run offense. I may say reject the screen and we may have two guys run down and we’re guarding each other basically. They just don’t understand it.”

Rather, what the Mountaineers have accomplished offensively through the first nine games is trying to simply find ways to get Taz Sherman and Sean McNeil open for shots.

That’s worked so far. Sherman and McNeil are combining to score about 48% of the team’s points.

It’s not exactly what Huggins had in mind heading into the season, though.

He envisioned Jalen Bridges becoming more of an all-around threat, one that teams would definitely have to guard and pay attention to.

Huggins saw a 6-foot-10 forward in Isaiah Cottrell, who could become an outside shooting threat, which would drag the bigger and taller defenders away from the basket to defend him.

“Sometimes, you can be too good a guy. He wants to do the right thing,” Huggins said of Bridges. “Sometimes you can want to do the right thing too much. He doesn’t want to take bad shots. He doesn’t want to force shots. He is a really good guy, a fantastic teammate.

“Hopefully, he’ll start to take the bull by the horns, so to speak. I’m certainly not going to chastise him for being a good guy, but you got to flip the switch.”

What Huggins didn’t want to see, but is dealing with currently, is a WVU team that is ninth in the Big 12 in scoring (70.6 ppg) and last in assists.

Starting point guard Kedrian Johnson is averaging just 1.4 assists per game. He had one against UConn, which came on the Mountaineers’ third possession of the game when he came off a pick-and-roll with Cottrell and then got the ball inside to the forward for a dunk.

WVU never got another opportunity like that one for the final 37 minutes of the game.

“It takes a while,” Huggins said. “I was laying in bed one night just wondering how can we get people out of the way? We’ve made teams play us one-on-one instead of playing (help defense) and all of that.”

The Mountaineers will eventually get to a point this season where they’ll need offensive help in order to force defenses to focus on more than just Sherman and McNeil.

For now, Sherman said, that’s a work in progress.

“We’re still figuring it out,” he said. “I think we still have guys who are trying to figure out their roles.

“We’ve got some guys with accountability. When they decide to become more aggressive, we’re a different team. We’ve got guys like (Bridges) and Malik (Curry), who can be really aggressive. They know they don’t have to go out and score 20, but just be more consistent. We need more than just two people or three people with points.”

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