MORGANTOWN — One of these days, either inside the WVU Coliseum or perhaps over at Milan Puskar Stadium, the chants of de-fense, de-fense won’t fall on deaf ears.
Those days are just not right now, which where it concerns the WVU men’s hoops team, is the one glaring defect in a sea of positives.
Make no mistake, this may be the most fun WVU team to watch since the days of “Press” Virginia, or even the Final Four squad.
It’s a great collection of individuals, all of them with fun personalities and unique opinions and great character.
And they can score with the best of them, something the Mountaineers showed yet again in their 96-78 victory on Sunday against Buffalo.
Erik Stevenson went on a hell of a scoring run in the first half, making shot after shot and finished with 22 points.
Tre Mitchell continues to show his versatility with making mid-range jumpers around the foul line and also worked his way into the paint for some baby hook shots that went in.
Mitchell added 17 points.
Jimmy Bell Jr. had his best game ever, finishing with his first career double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds.
He constantly used his 285-pound frame to power past double teams and et himself to the free-throw line.
Seth Wilson is a spark off the bench, so is Joe Toussaint, and WVU (9-2) did all of this against Buffalo without forward Emmitt Matthews Jr., who sat out the game with a knee injury.
From one game to the next, there is no telling which WVU player is going to be the star, which is the one unique story this team has over the “Press” Virginia days or the 2010 Final Four team.
We also don’t know for sure if this team can play any defense, either, and that is truly the main concern.
On Friday, it was Stevenson who proclaimed if the Mountaineers could get right defensively, then WVU had a shot at winning a national championship.
It’s hard not to agree with him.
But, this group has such a long way to go, something else that was quite evident against the Bulls (5-6), who shot 56.7% from the floor in the first half and was dominating in the paint until the final 12 minutes of the game.
“Obviously we didn’t guard the ball screen,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said. “We worked on it. We did a pretty good job of it in practice, but we didn’t do anything close to what we were supposed to do. We didn’t do a very good job.”
At one point in the game, Buffalo was outscoring WVU in the paint 30-14, and some guy named Isaac Jack was absolutely killing WVU on pick-and-roll situations.
“We didn’t catch the roll guy,” Huggins continued. “We just stood there. The reality is you should be under that guy, but we were a long way from being under him.”
The final 12 minutes were a different story in this one, as WVU went from holding on to a slim 61-60 lead to winning by 18 points, but the Mountaineers are running out of opponents they can push around.
And once WVU reaches Big 12 play, will its offense be enough to carry it?
If the answer is yes, then this is truly a season in Morgantown that we may never have seen before.
But, if you picture teams like Kansas and Baylor and Texas just scoring at will in the paint, while also playing some defense, then WVU’s season is going to be another frustrating one.
“Offensively, we can get hot pretty quick,” Stevenson said. “I’m seeing a bunch of numbers (on defense) that Huggs is going to talk about. Obviously it took us 20 minutes to figure it out and we were fortunate to get hot in the second half and pull away.”
For now, offense is selling the tickets in Morgantown, and there is plenty of offense to go around, but eventually the defense has to hold up its end of the bargain, too.
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