With West Virginia approaching back-to-back road games this week at Iowa State and Purdue, coach Bob Huggins remained cryptic on the status of Juwan Staten, revealing only that the sophomore point guard will have a seat on the team plane.
Staten, averaging a team-high 30 minutes per game, was benched in the second half of Wednesday’s 57-53 win at Texas and did not play in Saturday’s 65-64 home loss to Kansas State.
Asked Monday morning if Staten would travel with the team and play in Wednesday night’s game in Ames, Huggins said, “Yeah, he’s going to travel.”
Staten leads West Virginia (8-7, 1-2 Big 12) with 2.9 assists and 1.4 steals per game and ranks second in scoring with an average of 10.5 points. Huggins has declined to elaborate on the specifics of what led to Staten’s de facto suspension.
“Everybody’s got to be on the same page, and if everybody isn’t on the same page you don’t have a very good team,” Huggins said.
“We all make mistakes. We’ve got two days of practice before Iowa State, and we’ll see where everything is and what happens from there.”