MORGANTOWN — After a week off for Christmas break, welcome back to the WVU Coliseum, where Bob Huggins’ list of concerns about his team continues to grow. There is no telling at this point how much of a factor Lamont West’s knee injury will have. After all, we are talking about a kid who played with a wrist with three torn ligaments in it last season and didn’t tell anyone.
What we do know is Sagaba Konate (knee) will not be in uniform and could miss the first few games of the Big 12 season, which begins at home Wednesday, against No. 11 Texas Tech. Beetle Bolden will likely get the start at point guard today, but his shooting hand is not at 100 percent. Huggins said he wanted to continue to try to utilize the full-court pressure rather than give up on it. The Mountaineers (7-4) also have a need to improve their half-court man-to-man defense, which Huggins called “deplorable,” the other day. We also don’t know how senior forward Esa Ahmad will perform in his first game since getting benched. So much going on right now and time is running out to try and fix everything.
With all of that in mind, here’s what you need to know:
TV: AT&T SportsNet for the 2 p.m. tip-off. BETTING LINE: West Virginia is favored by 12.5 points.
THREE GOOD QUESTIONS
What has WVU accomplished with all of this time off? Mixed in with final exams and then a Christmas break, this will be just the Mountaineers’ third game in the last 14 days. In the days leading up to last week’s 74-72 victory against Jacksonville State, Huggins said WVU started going with two-a-day practices, with the second practice being a simple shooting session. Huggins’ comments about wanting to keep the full-court press going were interesting, so some time was probably devoted to that. Time will tell if these players get better in the press.
How will WVU handle the center position with Konate out? Huggins said the bigger question is what to do with Logan Routt, Derek Culver and Andrew Gordon if they’re in the game and the Mountaineers are trying to press. Culver could be a guy used at the top of the press, because he is long and and can run. You can’t put Gordon or Routt at the top of the press. As far as offensively, Routt knows what he’s doing, but Culver and Gordon still have an adjustment to make. None of the three are a shot-blocker like Konate, so you lose a little something there. It’s definitely an adjustment for Huggins to make when it comes to game strategy, “I’ve gone back over the things that we used to do,” Huggins said. “But everything that you do is personnel-related. What worked for Wellington Smith when he played center didn’t work for Deniz Kilicli, and what Deniz did doesn’t work for Logan Routt. We’re trying to figure out and mix and match the things that those guys do well into a unit. That’s been difficult.”
Is Lehigh a threat? The Mountain Hawks (7-3) are off to their best start since the 2012-13 season and they do have some size in junior forward Pat Andree and sophomore center James Karnik. What Lehigh can do is shoot the three. The Mountain Hawks are tied with Indiana State for No. 1 in the country at making 45 percent of their 3-point attempts. Put another way, Lehigh is shooting better from 3-point range than the Mountaineers are shooting (42.7 percent) from the floor. The main two guys to watch for are Andree and senior guard Kyle Leufroy. Both players are shooting 50 percent or better from three.
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