MORGANTOWN — A short spark that came in the second half Saturday was just enough to keep Bob Huggins from going all-in on making a drastic change to his West Virginia lineup.
That change?
“Our bigs have got to stop standing around and watching,” Huggins said after the Mountaineers lost to Arkansas 77-68 at Bud Walton Arena in the Big 12/SEC Challenge. “I told Erik (Martin) to take them out of the game. If they’re not going to go rebound the ball or at least attempt to rebound the ball, get them out of the game. We might as well play small and play with those freshmen who can make shots and have five guys on the floor who can make a shot.”
Prior to WVU going on a 12-0 run midway through the second half to cut into what was once a 19-point lead by the Razorbacks, Arkansas was completely doing what it wanted.
Then came that run, and Huggins had to put his thoughts on hold to go with a smaller lineup.
“We cut it to five, so you think maybe you got a chance,” Huggins continued. “Why would I do it then?”
It makes sense not to do it then, but, man, it could have been really interesting to see what might have transpired if that run never came and Huggins went through with wholesale changes mid-game.
Why? Because it is now time to think about doing something different.
Going small was not going to hurt WVU anymore on the boards. Arkansas finished with a commanding 44-26 rebounding edge, and that was with WVU playing bigger guys like Isaiah Cottrell, Pauly Paulicap and Dimon Carrigan.
Playing those big guys — you can also throw in Gabe Osabuohien into that mix — hasn’t helped WVU fix its rebounding woes all season.
We are now 20 games in and the calendar is just about ready to flip into February. WVU (13-7) began this season getting killed on the boards by Oakland, and 19 games later, it got killed on the boards by Arkansas. In between was a lot of lost rebounding battles, too.
Continuing to play those bigs the minutes they are playing simply isn’t warranted anymore.
Cottrell could still be a great player in the future, but it’s just not working out yet. Carrigan and Paulicap are not going to be difference makers consistently against this elite competition.
Osabuohien does really good things when he’s on the floor, but like the rest of his career, that hasn’t been a long time, because of constant foul trouble.
This isn’t to say Huggins should just give up on that group, which Huggins would never give up on a kid, but this is saying it’s time to take a look at something else.
If you’re going to killed on the boards anyway, WVU might as well do it with young guys like Kobe Johnson or Seth Wilson or even James Okonkwo on the floor.
If WVU is going to continue to struggle to rebound, you might as well see what the scoreboard looks like with, maybe, an extra 10 3-point attempts per game taken with more guards on the floor.
You might as well see how defenses are going to react to that. Maybe it frees up some better looks for Taz Sherman and Sean McNeil.
Neither had a great game against the Razorbacks (16-5), but a lot of that was due to the two guards seemingly being covered by three guys each.
Sherman’s two 3-pointers he did make were basically him going one-against-two, but still making the shots.
The bottom line is something different needs to be tried, because these bigs have shown through 20 games they’re not going to help on the glass and they’re not going to hits shots consistently.
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