The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board

Somewhat curiously, Kansas basketball, which has won or shared the last 11 Big 12 regular-season titles, brought basically its entire team to the World University games as Team USA and won eight games in 10 days to cop the gold medal — including a double overtime affair in the championship game against Germany that was actually quite fun to watch. That was a good run for the Jayhawks.

West Virginia went to the Bahamas and kicked a tomato can around the floor for 40 minutes Monday.

None of what follows are typos: 111-39 final score, a 28-3 score in the second quarter, a friggin’ 50-5 run in the final 15:23 of the first half, 43 steals, 55 forced turnovers and a 55-22 rebounding advantage.

Starting lineup: Carter, Miles, Paige, Holton, Williams. Ten players played between 10:40 and 23:39. Esa Ahmad missed a bunch of free throws and chased a double-double.

You can watch the entire game, if you want, in the above window. It’s all four quarter, not just the first. When one quarter ends, the next begins. Feel free to share your thoughts as you collect them.

Or just revel in this.

An actual FT attempt by our opponent. (Even @GottliebShow thinks that's a poor shot.) 111-39. Could've been way worse pic.twitter.com/Cjf3kODb8U

— Fake Bob Huggins (@FakeBobHuggins) August 11, 2015

I’d argue that there’s no way that was more productive than a practice, but WVU had 32 assists on 43 baskets on the good side of the ledger but also filled the bad side by committing 27 turnovers and shooting 18-for-35 at the free-throw line. There were some things to learn from the affair, and Bob Huggins found that black lining.

“I thought defensively we did some good things,” said coach Bob Huggins. “We have to continue to get better and not develop bad habits. Overall, we played pretty hard.”

I assure you, he was thinking about snorkeling with dolphins as he said that. He might have been in the mood for an hour by that point. WVU has two more of these to go down there, and, whoo boy, if that team was Elite, I can’t imagine what awaits the Mountaineers tomorrow against the Atlantis All-Stars, which might be a collection of the best lifeguards, chefs, concierges and shuttle drivers at chosen resorts.

By the time the ball is teed up Sept. 5 and WVU and Georgia Southern commence the season-opener, it’ll have been 22 months since Jared Barber last played what he calls a “real football snap.” The last one, with no offense to the many he banked throughout the past spring, was the final one in the overtime loss to Texas in 2013.

He tore the ACL in his right knee and then suffered a lengthy setback in rehabilitation thanks to a MRSA infection that he and his doctors just could not shake. (That, it turns out, was a bothersome blessing, because without it, he ends up playing last year and walking away with what could be considered an incomplete career.)

But he’s back now. He looked good in the spring. Everyone says he’s at his best right now. The coaches will even grant him time off every now and then because they trust he’s not going to miss some reps here and there, which is rare and at the same time enlightening.

But honestly, how good is he? How can we know right now?

Here’s a way to look at it: Barber’s good enough that he’s keeping Xavier Preston, an apparent monster, on the sideline. You think about that.

“If he’s not an all-conference player next year,” Barber said, “I’ll be very surprised.”

Preston is a backup, though, because the Mountaineers are good enough at linebacker to keep a player like that out of the starting lineup. When spring football had come and gone, Gibson said nobody on his talented and experienced defense was better than Preston.

What Gibson considered before the spring proved to be more important. He knew it would be asking a lot to throw Preston into the top spot at Sam linebacker, where Wes Tonkery finished fourth on the team in tackles as a senior the year before.

“Going into the spring, nobody knew who he was,” Gibson said. “He was a freshman who’d played a few snaps and played mostly on special teams. He was still learning a little bit.”

So Gibson made some preemptive maneuvers, sliding Nick Kwiatkoski from the middle, where he led the team in tackles, to Sam and trusting Barber would return to form and maybe exceed it in the middle. Shaq Petteway, who finally seemed ready to break through after taking over the Will position late in the season, was back, too.

“It was open [competition] for who was going to win the jobs,” Gibson said. “Obviously, Nick won it, but it wasn’t like I said, ‘You get this job and you get that job.’ You still had to go out there and compete.”

The outcome suits the defense just fine. Kwiatkoski, Barber and Petteway are all seniors situated in their natural positions, the places they’d been expected to play when they were recruited to play in Jeff Casteel’s version of the 3-3-5 that Gibson has returned to WVU.

“Me, Kwit and Shaq are the starters right now, and the plan is to play as many snaps as possible,” Barber said. “We don’t plan on coming off the field.”