Congratulations to you, for though you completely botched last night’s game (Oregon 45, Ohio State 20!), you still had the blog’s bowl challenge in the bag before kickoff.
The winner started off 11-0, which held up against a 13-15 finish.
We know nothing about who’s taking the first snap of the 2015 season.
Skyler Howard opened the door in the bowl, William Crest has a questionable shoulder, Paul Millard hasn’t been able to get on the field and now there are two more candidates. David Sills V and Chris Chugunov enrolled Monday, and one thing we can say for sure is Dana Holgorsen is going to play the best one, regardless of age and experience. The good news for the newly enrolled: winter workouts, spring football and summertime’s new rules let freshmen grow and develop faster than ever before.
When the season started, Devin Williams and Jonathan Holton were a tantalizing tandem, “alike and different in so many integral and irresistible ways, but bound by no greater reality than this: They hold the keys to the season.”
So, about that … it’s not working out too well, and maybe that underlined portion is truer today because of what happened Saturday. Holton’s struggles continued, and he looks everything like a player who wants so much to make it work and can’t shake the frustration of not having it go his way.
Holton, meanwhile, has scored only 16 points in his first three Big 12 games on 6 for 14 shooting and added just eight rebounds. He’s played 20, 18 and 20 minutes and his averages have dipped to 10 points and 6.4 rebounds. He hasn’t looked confident or comfortable and those moments have seen him welcomed under the wing of the team’s leader.
“You try to let him know it’s not going to be perfect,” WVU point guard Juwan Staten said. “Nobody expects him to go out and score all the points or grab every rebound. Just be yourself. Be all over the place. Get your hands on balls and get deflections and play as hard as you can to give us that energy.”
And while we’re here, we can lump Nate Adrian in there, as well. Bob Huggins said today the season-long shooting woes are “in Nate’s head.” But that’s two players in the front court, and let’s not forget Brandon Watkins lost like 25 pounds when he was sick and isn’t all the way back to where he was. Elijah Macon has tender ribs, missed the Texas Tech game and and “probably wasn’t ready to play” against Iowa State, according to Huggins.
Devin Williams, though, looks like he’s figuring things out, not unlike he did late last season. He’s scored 14 points in all three Big 12 games — on just 24 shots, which is a whole other problem and goes back to the prior post about passing — and his double-double against the Cyclones was his first since he started the season with three in a row. He’s managed to surge without Holton, and Williams might be the blueprint for Holton’s return to normalcy.
“Devin is doing what Devin is good at doing again,” Huggins said. “You can’t force action. You have to let it come to you and you can’t cheat the game. The game won’t let you. It’s too much of a skill game to go too fast and try to take shortcuts and cheat it. I think Devin has slowed down and he’s been more sound and he’s put in a bunch of time with his technique.”
The 74-72 loss to Iowa State Saturday night left West Virginia’s coach wanting more from a team that didn’t give a whole lot in defeat.
I might be the outlier here, which is fine, and I do see the woeful shooting numbers … but WVU’s two losses are to two pretty good teams by a combined three points. In both games, at home, no less, the Mountaineers did so many singular things wrong that had one or two not been botched they probably win one or both of those games.
Huggins said something in his press conference about game slippage and how it’s tied to preparedness, and it makes sense in context. The belief here is those things tend to get better as the season goes on. First-year players, for example, have no idea about scouting reports in conference play. They’re different animals, far more complex and informed against better opponents, and the other side knows more and more as the season progresses, as well.
The real trouble, as you know, came on offense. Twenty-nine 3-point attempts is too many for a team only good enough to make seven, and the issue was those were sometimes early shots or the best shots. Neither is a good thing for the Mountaineers. They need to get their early shots at the rim, because a 3 will always be there for this team, and the best shots aren’t often going to be 3s for this collection of players. There are exceptions, and if Jaysean Paige can step into one up top or Jevon Carter can get settled on the sideline, you’ll take those. But Juwan Staten sizing one up off the dribble? Nate Adrian pretty much anywhere right now? Jon Holton? You’d rather not see that early in a possession.
Just WVU should be able to motion and cut and pass and screen with increasing effectiveness throughout the game because the press and the offense inflict that cumulative effective. Didn’t happen Saturday because the passing was so, so bad. I mean, non-existent at times. The ball stopped a lot, which gave Iowa State time to recover and protect, and the team with the fewest blocked shots in the Big 12 wasn’t asked to block too many drives to the basket, things that happen when the offense works quickly and facilitates drives and cuts. Of course, WVU missed seven more layups.
WVU’s passing problems were most noticeable and most critical against the zone defense Iowa State hadn’t shown all season. The Mountaineers couldn’t get inside with drives or passes and the Cyclones, forced into the tactic because of foul trouble, ultimately prevailed because of it.
That had Huggins heated afterward.
“You don’t go to many places where you look in the morning paper and see the bum of the game and who you’re supposed to boo, but that gets them pretty fired it. It’s fun. That’s what college basketball is all about.”
— Fred Hoiberg
Iowa State head coach
You are looking live at the Iowa State edition of the Mountaineer Maniacs Musings. They’re back in town — the spring semester starts Monday — and a lot of them are supposed to be in attendance today.
Something else that’s somewhat new: There’s a D.J. in the corner spinning tunes before the game. I don’t remember him before tonight, and though he’s new this season, this is not his first game this season. I like it — and I’m #TeamPepBand.
We’re also working with wonky WiFi tonight. I make no promises. Let’s give it the old college try…
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Welcome to the Friday Feedback, happy to kick it with you after a really weird week. Wasn’t sure I’d make it today after catching something during my 20-hour sojourn from Lubbock all the way to Dallas Tuesday. I had this weird dream, induced or inspired by my health or medication or a lack of sleep or a potent combination, that I wrote about pinatas with razor blades in them and how WVU had three defensive line coaches and … yeah, I had to be here today.
Because tomorrow is going to be a fun one at the Coliseum. Remember the last time Iowa State was inside the Coliseum? It was a demolition and the Mountaineers destroyed a pretty good Cyclones team. The game was over way before it was over, but neither team was finished and there was ample animosity to suggest something might happen.
And then something happened.
There’s nothing good about this … but the best part is you hear the broadcast team talking about Ron Artest and remembering Malice in the Palace as part of an allusion to a possible bad scene at the Coliseum. Eron Harris was ejected for a flagrant 2 foul. Dustin Hogue was given a flagrant 1. There were some accusations and denials after the game, but it was clear those two teams had had enough of one another.
Then WVU went to Iowa State and was never really a threat to win the game. Harris had a bad night and he was a target from the start.
Well, here come the 17th-ranked Cyclones, quietly scuffling with 123 points in the past two games. The 14th-ranked Mountaineers come strutting into the game with their problem-causing defense and their second seven-game winning streak. It’s an 8 p.m. start. All of that makes this one to watch, but we have the sidebar, too.
No one has forgotten what happened here last season, even if the memories vary.
I’m going to have to tune them out this time,” Hogue said. “They’re going to have a field day with me. I already know that.”
The Mountaineers crushed Iowa State that night and would lead by 32 points on the way to a 102-77 win. With 4:30 left to play, a Cyclones miss floated over to an area where Hogue and WVU’s Kevin Noreen were standing. Exactly what happened next is the source of great debate, but what’s clear is Hogue’s right foot struck Noreen in the chest.
Iowa State coach Fred Hoiberg remembers that Hogue “kind of threw his foot out on the rebound.” The Mountaineers were convinced that night Hogue took out his team’s frustrations on Noreen.
The outcome was an overshadowed flagrant foul against Hogue.
“I’ve always been the wild guy, but I was trying to get the rebound,” Hogue said. “I realize my foot was going out and it looks bad on camera, but that was never my intent.”
The crowd of 8,177 was livid, but only briefly. A loose ball bounced to Iowa State’s Monte Morris. He drove to the left side of the basket tried a layup but met WVU’s Eron Harris along the way. Harris swung his right arm wildly and struck Morris hard in the head. Harris was given a flagrant 2 foul and ejected.
He said after the game he was only trying to block the shot. Hoiberg remembered Harris “took one out on Monte.” Morris said WVU’s Juwan Staten told him Harris’ foul was “payback.” Staten denied ever saying that and pointed out the Mountaineers were stomping the Cyclones at that time.
“Those things happen in the game of basketball,” said Hoiberg, a star at Iowa State and later in the NBA. “I don’t know if it was any one thing because it was our two teams, but I do think when you play against West Virginia, it’s going to be a battle.”
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, prepare properly.
UnLucky said:
Good thing we didn’t cancel the season after we trailed Monmouth at halftime.
Ya think? Monmouth is very average, by the way.
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What does this have to do with WVU basketball, its ranking, its record, its start and its future? So glad you asked.
They being the 14th-ranked Mountaineers of West Virginia University, and they are not to be confused with me, who is still in Texas.
Anyhow, WVU is 14-1 with the loss coming at home against LSU, which is probably WVU’s best opponent to date. Yet WVU is also 2-0 in conference play, which is the very same situation the Mountaineers were in last season.
You have the right to remain suspicious.
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The prevailing reaction to the Shane Lyons hire was that West Virginia found a pretty firm fit for a pretty demanding job. Lyons has the resume and the experience, as well as some of the important personal variables, to sell this to supporters and skeptics alike. Ask around, and people respect the guy and project he’ll be suited fine to handle what awaits him.
Lyons has worked with schools, too, of course, most recently at Alabama, where he had oversight of a $120 million athletics budget. He spent four years with the Crimson Tide and three years (1998-2001) at Texas Tech, where he was the associate athletic director for compliance.
He also spent nearly a decade with the NCAA, where he was first hired in November of 1989. He stayed there until August of 1998, when he left for the Texas Tech job.
While at the NCAA he worked with Alfred White, a long-time friend who is now the associate commissioner of Conference USA. White said Monday that Lyons “has seen it all,” which makes the first-time athletic director suited for the lead role.
“Now that he’s going to become an athletics director he’s going to have a perspective not many people sitting around the table with him are going to have,” White said. “He’s going to know what it’s like being in the trenches on a college campus, but he’s also going to know how everything will be dealt with and handled at the NCAA and then the conference level. That’s really invaluable, those experiences and perspectives.
“That will benefit WVU in ways that are sort of indescribable,” White added. “I don’t think there will be anything that will confront WVU in the coming years that will be totally foreign to Shane.”
It is an ideal combination, an athletics official with state ties who understands the industry and its challenges, the culture here and the built-in hurdles that exist.
“It is an important factor that he understands and values this state and believes in its future,” Gee said.
Ah, that last part.
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