MORGANTOWN — Time, they say, is meant to heal wounds, and we’re about to find out if six months was long enough to cure the ills of the WVU men’s basketball team.
The Mountaineers open preseason practice on Monday for the 2022-23 season, with the hope that it is a completely different story rather than just a continuation of what transpired in 2021-22.
Last season was a journey of confusion and frustration right down to the end.
Over the course of 33 games — WVU finished 16-17 — the Mountaineers were constantly beaten on the boards, finished second in the Big 12 in blocked shots, yet rarely defended the paint well and was the only Big 12 team that allowed more points than it scored over the entire season.
These are all just numbers in a game played by real people, who thrive on momentum and struggle with adversity that generally have nothing to do with statistics or analytics.
Yet, you can’t escape numbers in athletics. In the end, numbers come to define athletes and coaches and WVU’s 2021-22 season is no different.
What happened — or didn’t happen, based on your point of view — to the Mountaineers maybe can best be summed up by diving deeper into the stats.
You really don’t have to look much further than defense, both the Mountaineers’, as well as their opponents’.
WVU played 12 games last season against schools that finished in the top 100 in the country in field-goal percentage defense, meaning the top teams in not allowing other teams to make shots.
The Mountaineers finished 3-9 in those games, while shooting a combined 35.7% from the field.
They averaged 62.9 points in those games. Their opponents averaged 72.3.
So many times last season WVU head coach Bob Huggins broke down his team’s inability to make shots. Well, against some of the best teams in the country in forcing misses, the Mountaineers simply padded their opponents’ numbers.
There is a flip side, too, in that WVU was nowhere close to the top 100 in that category.
While the Mountaineers struggled to make shots, they allowed a lot to go in at the other end.
WVU finished No. 253 in the nation in field-goal percentage defense, with opponents making 44.6% of their shots.
Comings and goings
It was not a quiet offseason for the Mountaineers, anything but.
In the past six months, WVU saw three starters transfer, while five others exhausted eligibility.
Assistant coach Erik Martin became the head coach at South Carolina State and Josh Eilert was promoted from within to replace him.
And, oh by the way, Huggins was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame earlier this month, capping off an offseason that forced you to keep your head on a swivel.
In all, the Mountaineers lost five players to the transfer portal.
Seny N’Diaye and Taj Thweatt left during the season.
Sean McNeil, Jalen Bridges and Isaiah Cottrell transferred after the season. Those three accounted for 36.2% of WVU’s scoring last season, with McNeil averaging 12.2 points per game.
In their place are eight news faces and one not-so-new face.
The not-so-new guy is forward Emmitt Matthews Jr., who played in 92 games for the Mountaineers from 2018-21, before transferring to Washington.
Matthews transferred back to WVU in April for his final season of eligibility. He averaged 11.7 points and 4.7 rebounds last season with the Huskies.
Other new additions: Junior-college recruits Jimmy Bell Jr., Mohamed Wague and Patrick Suemnick; transfers Joe Toussaint (Iowa), Tre Mitchell (Texas) and Erik Stevenson (South Carolina) and freshmen Josiah Harris and Josiah Davis.
Davis is considered a walk-on this season, but is expected to be put on scholarship next season.
That’s nine new additions in one season, which keeps up a trend. WVU began the 2021-22 season with seven new players.
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