No. 14 WVU 81, No. 13 Iowa State 76
February 3, 2016 by Mike Casazza
I don’t know the reason for this, and maybe it’s not worth the time needed to solve or discuss it. Or maybe you have an answer. Whatever, it’s secondary to my eventual point, which I’ll get to. But for some reason, for whatever reason, coaching decisions, and even coaching in general, isn’t a topic of great debate and attention in college basketball. Certainly not as much as it is in football.
Again, there’s probably a good explanation, but that’s not why I’m here. And maybe I have a blind spot. I cover one school. I don’t and can’t pay attention to (many) others. And maybe it’s because Bob Huggins has the wins and the resume and is a few steps from reproach, whereas Dana Holgorsen does not yet have quite as many triumphs or lines on his resume and has been very reproachable.
But a basketball game is so fast and often performed without constant contributions from the coaches. A football team has, what, 12 possessions in a game, and coordinators want to call plays for every snap and sub as frequently as possible.
Take a guess how many possessions WVU had last night.
Huggins and I have talked about this before. He gets five timeouts a game, but football coordinators get a timeout between every play — he’s embellishing, but you get the point. Basketball coaches don’t have the same access to affecting the game.
So the pace and the flow of a basketball game often overshadows a coach’s impact, and it’s the things that happen after timeouts or in the final seconds of a half or a game that stand out the most. Huggins didn’t draw up a game-winner and didn’t put his hands on anything that looked ingenious and by design at the end of either half. There wasn’t something unmistakable from the 81-76 win, but I feel confident saying this: Bob Huggins had a heck of a game Tuesday night.
Let’s remember the foundation of the win: No Jon Holton, three losses in five games, three starters in a rut, a wretched taste in his mouth after Saturday’s loss and a night game at Hilton.
Huggins didn’t change his starting lineup and he started out pressing, but none of that lasted long.
Daxter Miles again not only missed his first shot, but missed the rim, and he took a quick seat. The press and the traps worked against the Mountaineers, and Iowa State was able to spread out WVU and take advantage. It was a 15-point lead, and that happened after Huggins called a 30-second timeout and subbed out Elijah Macon, who had a tough night.
But Huggins adapted. His players said he talked with them about the defense, and the players were concerned about covering so much space against a team so good at passing and shooting. Huggins backed off the press. He didn’t move all the way from it, but WVU was extending the defense more than it was taxing the Cyclones. The Mountaineers remained aggressive, and they still sped up Iowa State and caused plenty of turnovers, many inside the 3-point line, but WVU was also a little more condensed than normal, and I have to think that led to the rebounding domination … without Holton.
He didn’t push a lot of buttons in the second half — he asked the Mountaineers to play hard and run offense — and it worked. Look at the second-half box score:
Thirty-seven possessions, 21 scores and a wild 1.297 points per possession. The Mountaineers ran offense, which is how Esa Ahmad got so involved, and Jaysean Paige’s number was called again and again for drives at the rim. Seven 3-point attempts and 13 free-throw attempts is good for WVU. Five turnovers is great.
But look at the playing time, too. Watkins didn’t play. Macon played a nibble, and that turned out to be important, and Carter played less than Teyvon Myers, who was great. Took two shots, made two shots, kept the ball moving and didn’t turn have a turnover.
That’s basically an eight-man rotation, which was what he’d suggested might happen. I’m not sure it was the idea, but Macon and Carter were both off, and Huggins wasn’t going to risk it with them.
Macon was nevertheless involved in one subtle sequence. WVU led 56-52 with 10:25 to go, and the game went to the under-12 media timeout on Nathan Adrian’s fourth foul. Huggins sat Adrian, Williams and Miles, who was the best he’s been in Big 12 play, and Paige was already on the bench. Huggins used Tarik Phillip, Carter, Myers, Ahmad and Macon.
When the under-8 media timeout came at the 7:58 mark, the score was tied 60-60. Huggins took out Macon and Myers and put in Williams and Paige. He used timeouts before the under-4 media timeout and with 41 seconds to go and only made one sub in the final 7:58 — Adrian in for Carter with 4:27 to go, which let WVU play some zone and defend and rebound within it.
Miles, who played well, didn’t play at all in the final 10:35. Carter, the starting point guard, sat for the final 4:27. That’s serious.
It let Adrian rise up and make maybe the biggest shot of his career — a quick 3 that cut the 70-65 lead to just two points, two points Paige scored seconds later in transition — and play solid defense against Georges Niang.
True, the Mountaineers got some luck. Monte Morris threw an alley oop pass through Jameel McKay’s fingers when the score was tied 72-72, and Morris missed a layup that would have given his team the lead with 43 seconds left. The biggest play was probably after Phillip missed the front end of the one-and-0ne with 18 seconds to go, only to have Williams tip it back to Phillip, who was fouled and iced the game with two free throws for an 79-74 lead.
But the length of WVU’s late defense contributed to those Iowa State miscues. Adrian, Paige and Williams made those plays on offense. It seems like more skill than serendipity. The cumulative effect, confined in space on defense and in minutes with regard to the rotation, again had an effect. Iowa State says it wasn’t tough enough.
The Mountaineers are good. They’re better than they were Saturday, and Tuesday’s game could be chalked up to overlapping contributions from Williams, Miles and Ahmad, who had not been as good individually, never mind collectively, in a long time.
But that’s shortsighted, too. Just about everyone did something meaningful. Carter had five assists in the first half as WVU got back into the game. Macon tried and was unlucky. Myers made two big shots. There really wasn’t a moment where you thought, “Hmm, they miss Holton again.” The pieces are there this season, and Tuesday affirmed that. Not at full strength, not their normal selves, ahead at the end.
The Mountaineers have a win at Hilton, where Iowa State had won 32 of 34 — the losses are to Baylor — and just last month beat No. 1 Oklahoma and No. 4 Kansas. At the halfway point of Big 12 play, they’re tied for first place in the toughest conference in the country.
Three days after suffering their worst loss of the season, a 17-point defeat on the road against Florida in the Big 12-SEC Challenge, the Mountaineers (18-4, 7-2 Big 12) won here for the first time in four tries since joining the Big 12 in the 2012-13 season. They’d lost by two points on a shot just before the buzzer, 17 points and 20 points last season.
In their fourth year of the Big 12, WVU still hasn’t won at Oklahoma, where they’ve already lost this season, and Kansas, where they play Feb. 9.
“Everyone counts us out regardless. Reading things, everybody counted us out,” Paige said. “Nobody expected us to win this game. But we stick with each other in the locker room and keep each other confident. We came together and fought through it.”
Their reward for taking Hilton off the list was a continued share of first place in the conference standings halfway through the conference schedule. No. 1 Oklahoma (19-2, 7-2) won at home Tuesday against TCU and visits the Coliseum Feb. 20.