MORGANTOWN — In addressing the crowd at the annual Gold-Blue Debut on Friday, WVU men’s basketball coach Bob Huggins wasted little time in sharing his thoughts on the Big 12 coaches’ preseason poll.
A year after finishing last in the conference, the Mountaineers were picked ninth out of 10 schools for the 2022-23 season.
“Well, we were picked ninth in the league,” Huggins began before looking up to the crowd. “What do you all think, are we going to be ninth?”
The crowd responded with an resounding no.
“We’re not going to do that again,” Huggins said. “I’m tired hearing about Baylor. I’m tired hearing about Kansas. To say it in a rather proverbial West Virginia way, let’s just go kick their (butts).”
As for the annual scrimmage itself, it was a low-scoring affair in two 12-minute periods.
The Gold came away with a 37-31 victory, behind Mohamed Wague’s 12 points and eight rebounds. The Blue was led by Kedrian Johnson’s 14 points.
Wague, a junior-college transfer in his first season of Division I hoops, looked like he could make some sort of impact down low for the Mountaineers.
He shot 6 of 8 from the floor and three of his eight rebounds were offensive.
He also added two steals out on the perimeter, one of them led to a run-out dunk.
The two squads combined to shoot 38.8% (28 of 72) from the floor and made a combined eight
3-pointers.
Who looked good?
Sophomore Jamel King, at least early on, appears to have gained a lot of confidence in his 3-point shot. He finished 2 of 5 from long distance and never hesitated to take any of his shots. Both of his threes came from the corner and he finished with 10 points for the Gold.
South Carolina transfer Erik Stevenson will join Johnson as another guard who likes to be aggressive on defense.
Stevenson, known more for his outside shooting, also didn’t hesitate to drive the ball into the lane against bigger defenders, even though it was sometimes hard to get off a good shot once he did.
He finished with just three points on 1 of 8 shooting, but also added three assists and three blocked shots for the Gold.
Who was missing?
Three forwards sat out the scrimmage with injuries.
Tre Mitchell — a transfer from Texas — sat out with a foot injury.
Emmitt Matthews Jr. sat out with a sore shoulder and Pat Suemnick — a junior-college transfer — is dealing with a knee issue.
What’s new?
Located in the old Coliseum weight room is now Club 35, which is still under construction.
A section of roughly 28 seats were removed behind the basket to make way for the entrance into the club, which is named after Huggins’ jersey number when he played at WVU.
The club is expected to make its debut during the charity exhibition game against Bowling Green on Oct. 28. Entrance into the club is reserved for MAC members at the Summit level and above.
Even with a section of seats removed along the baseline, WVU officials said the official capacity of the Coliseum remains 14,000.
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