WVU looks to better on-court chemistry in battle against Navy

MORGANTOWN — The list was long enough that it pretty much answered the question of just who is this WVU men’s basketball team?

WVU head coach Bob Huggins on forward Tre Mitchell: ”When you look at someone like Tre, he hadn’t played in a while and he had a pretty serious injury to overcome.”

Huggins on forward Emmitt Matthews Jr.: “Emmitt coming from one league to another (Pac-12 to Big 12). They play entirely different out there.”

Huggins on guard Erik Stevenson: “Erik’s situation, this is his fourth school, so he’s played in different leagues.”

Following last week’s second-half meltdown against Xavier, there seems to be no clear-cut category in which to put the Mountaineers (6-2), who host Navy at 7 p.m. Wednesday inside the Coliseum.

WVU STATS

Good team? Maybe. Shooting well? So far. Competitive? Probably, but it’s also a team that got exposed defensively by Xavier and has yet to show it’s going to rebound the ball consistently.

“We are capable of playing with the best teams in the country,” Huggins continued. “There’s a lot of things I could say about the Xavier game, but I won’t.”

It’s a page difficult to turn, a lesson hope to be learned, as the Mountaineers face just four more nonconference opponents until the start of Big 12 play.

“I felt like we just beat ourselves,” WVU guard Joe Toussaint said. “I watched the film individually and we also watched it as a team. There’s nothing that we can change about it. We had some mental lapses on the defensive end and the offensive end.”

As each clip of the game passed by, Toussaint knew it was a loss that fell on WVU’s guards.

“I got together with Erik and Kedy (Kedrian Johnson) and told them that loss was on us,” Toussaint said. “As guards, we’ve got to do a better job of looking at the clock and be better at time management. We’ve got to get the ball where it needs to be. If something isn’t going on, we need to go make something happen.”

Toussaint said he can live with blame coming his way — “That’s just the way I’ve always been,” he said. — but it’s still too early to point fingers across the board.

But, there is still the question of this team reaching its potential and doing so by trying to gel a roster of new players with another one — guard Jose Perez — on the way once Perez is cleared by the NCAA.

“There’s definitely room for improvement,” Toussaint said. “It’s something we’ve improved since the summer time. We’re not there, yet. I’d rather take these losses and learn from it now than in March. We’re getting better everyday.

“I always tell people, ‘At some point, you’re going to need help in a game. So, if you help me, I’m going to help you.’ That’s my logic behind everything.”

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