WVU looks to build a better rhythm against Monmouth between Jesse Edwards and outside shooters

MORGANTOWN — It is the one truly amazing thing about sports, in that the names and faces can change, but the keys to scoring more points than the other team rarely do.

Take this WVU men’s basketball team, which certainly has seen its share of new faces.

Josh Eilert is in as head coach for Bob Huggins and Eilert’s offensive approach is new in philosophy to what Huggins ran.

Yet when it comes to the bottom line, Huggins’ love for feeding the big guys down low is of the same importance as to what Eilert is trying to accomplish.

That’s where WVU center Jesse Edwards comes into play.

True, he has a different skill set than WVU bigs in the past such as Derek Culver or Sagaba Konate, but that makes him no less important to the Mountaineers (1-0).

“Like I told our guys, Jesse Edwards is special,” Eilert said. “In a lot of ways, he’s our bread and butter. The more touches we can get him, the better off everyone is going to be.”

The flip side is other teams know it, too. Missouri State spent nearly the entire game having two, sometimes three defenders around Edwards.

“I had my suspicions they were going to sag back on Jesse and double team him,” Eilert said. “I think that’s going to happen all year.”

What Eilert didn’t expect was a defense so concentrated on Edwards that it basically dared anyone on else on the team to beat them.

“I didn’t know they were just going to invite some of our guards to beat them and shoot them out of their defense,” Eilert continued. “We have to be more prepared for that.”

The results saw Edwards still going for 13 points and 13 rebounds, but he only took seven shots along the way.

“We’ve got to get him more shots, for sure,” Eilert said after the game.

The constant attention around Edwards will likely happen again, as Monmouth (N.J.) visits the Coliseum at 7 p.m. Friday.

WVU’s outside shooters will once again be challenged to hold up their end of the bargain, a thought that didn’t change in Huggins’ 16 seasons at the school and isn’t going to change under Eilert.

“If you make comparisons there, I think Jesse is way more willing and able passer out of the post,” Eilert said. “It will be harder for teams to double. We just have to be in the correct spacing, in terms of taking advantage of step-in shots.

“We will get step-in shots if we’re patient in the double teams and make the right cuts and make the extra pass. Then it comes down to making the open shots.”

WVU spent the first 20 minutes making just four shots against Missouri State.

The second half was a different story, when the Mountaineers turned things around and shot 58% and went 6-of-11 from 3-point range.

“Everybody thought I had profound words of wisdom at halftime,” Eilert said. “More than anything, I just had a heart-to-heart with them and said, ‘Guys, we can’t get any worse than this,’ in terms of the way we shot it.

“We talked a lot about trust. Trust the process, trust the system and trust each other. Once we started doing the little things, it didn’t take much to get it turned offensively.”