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West Virginia has started the season strong, but there are areas that need improvement.
At the top of that list is on the defensive end. The Mountaineers allowed Navy to shoot 46-percent from the field after allowing Xavier to shoot 54-percent the game before.
“It’s not our offense, it’s our defense,” senior guard Erik Stevenson said. “We have to get so much better defensively especially on the ball and with our rotations. We talk about it; we mentally know what to do it’s just about doing it. We have to take our next step defensively.”
West Virginia has allowed players to get past them on the defensive end, which has allowed open shots for opponents due to the stresses it puts on the defense.
The defense is designed to speed up opponents by overextending and creating issues, but that also has its downfalls.
Some of that is due to the defensive system where the Mountaineers are aggressive in passing lanes, but it can be cleared up with the correct rotations and dialing in on assignments on that end.
“This might sound crazy but just do it. Just going out there and doing it. We’ve got so many old guys that have played in so many different systems but every system requires help at some point,” Stevenson said. “Somebody is going to get beat, we play good players, somebody is going to get beat and we’re going to be put in stressful situations and we have to limit team’s success while they put us in those.”
Head coach Bob Huggins believes that with the athleticism that his team possesses there should be no reason why they aren’t able to stay in front of people. It boils down to technique and while players have done it in drills, at times it hasn’t translated into games.
“We’ve got a lot of guys who can score and have pretty much scored their whole career so their focus has been pretty much solely offensively but they need to stay in front of people and guard,” he said.
West Virginia has to get better on the defensive end and that is going to be put to the test moving forward.
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