WVU, Kansas State both battling passing, scoring struggles as they prepare for rematch

MORGANTOWN — One is deemed “steady” by WVU men’s basketball coach Bob Huggins, while the other is a defensive pest and the other is a scorer.

Those are the strengths of WVU point guards Kobe Johnson, Kedrian Johnson and Malik Curry.

While those strengths have allowed Huggins to mix and match depending on situations throughout the season, all three guards share the same weakness of delivering good passes on time or to the right option.

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“When you run a set, you have option one come open,” Huggins said Saturday after WVU’s 81-58 road loss against Oklahoma State. “You look at option one and, if that’s not open, you look at option two. And there are times where maybe you look at option three. We couldn’t look at option one. Didn’t want to look at option one. That’s frustrating. It’s frustrating when they do cover option one and option two is wide open under the basket and we don’t throw the ball to either one of them. It just gets frustrating.”

WVU (14-10, 3-8 Big 12) enters a second consecutive road game at 7 p.m. Monday against Kansas State (13-11, 5-7) in what could be a contest of which team can connect the most dots between passer and receiver.

While the Mountaineers are last in the Big 12 in assists (246), the Wildcats are ninth (311).

The direct result of that is both team’s poor shooting percentages, which are also ninth and 10th in the Big 12, setting up what is likely to be a low-scoring affair inside Bramlage Coliseum.

“We’ve had a hard time passing the ball all year,” Huggins said. “We’re not making any shots. I was watching them in warm-ups and they weren’t making any shots. We started doing some of the old stuff, where we screen for the screener. We were open, but we just didn’t throw them the ball. The hardest thing with this team is finding a guy who will pass the ball or a guy who will make the correct pass.”

The flip side is while WVU has lost eight of its last nine, K-State has won three of its last four, including an overtime win against Iowa State on Saturday.

In those three wins, the Wildcats are averaging 14.3 assists per game and had 17 against Iowa State. WVU hasn’t had more than 16 assists in a game all season and was held to seven against Oklahoma State.

In recent games, Huggins has tried to shake things up by starting Kobe Johnson at point guard, with Curry and Kedrian Johnson coming off the bench.

With Kobe Johnson in the lineup, WVU got off to an 8-2 run in the early minutes against the Cowboys and held a lead until the final four minutes of the half.

Looking to get some early stops, it was Kedrian Johnson who got the start in the second half, but the Cowboys went off on a 16-2 run over the first seven minutes to take a 20-point lead.

“We ran great sets early in the second half and we never looked at the second option,” Huggins said. “We never gave it a glance. That was a senior with the ball. That’s a guy that everybody would think you’d want to have distributing the ball for you. He’s not going to make a shot, but he should be able to distribute the ball for you.”

That opened the door for Huggins to play Curry the rest of the way, because WVU now needed offense. Curry finished with a team-high 13 points, but WVU never got closer than 12 points of the lead.

Kobe Johnson didn’t play in the second half.

“We had to score,” Huggins said. “Kobe is going to be a guy who can score, but he’s not a guy who is going to score the ball now.

“In all honesty, we probably should have played Malik earlier. He’s a scoring point guard.”

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