MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — In the end, Bob Huggins coached Saturday’s 84-82 exhibition loss against Penn State just like a game that meant absolutely nothing.
He could have called more timeouts. He could have run different sets and plays.
“We were very vanilla, because I didn’t want to throw the works out there so Buffalo could have a week to work on it,” Huggins said, pointing to West Virginia’s upcoming opponent in the regular-season opener.
In return, the 13th-ranked Mountaineers put forth an effort that had more questions than answers.
Penn State guard Josh Reaves won the game with one second remaining, when he scored on an uncontested offensive putback after grabbing Lamar Stevens’ miss from the foul line.
In the last second, Logan Routt’s full-court inbounds pass was batted away and the final horn sounded.
In truth, the Nittany Lions — last season’s NIT champion — won the game by making 13-of-25 from 3-point range and outrebounding the Mountaineers 41-37, with 18 of those rebounds coming on the offensive end.
“They just wanted it more than we did,” West Virginia forward Lamont West said. “There isn’t much else to say. They played a lot harder than we did. We didn’t play very hard at all.”
Maybe the biggest question for the Mountaineers will be what will they look like once point guard Beetle Bolden returns from a hand injury?
Huggins held Bolden out of the exhibition, though the junior has been practicing.
“It hurts not having Beetle in there,” said West Virginia guard Chase Harler, who finished with 10 points and three assists after getting the start.
“We just have to figure things out. It all starts by playing hard. We didn’t play as hard as we should have today.”
Without Bolden, point guards Brandon Knapper, Jermaine Haley and Jordan McCabe shot a combined 5-of-13 and added six assists and six turnovers.
Aside from Esa Ahmad’s 25 points and seven rebounds, no West Virginia player found any consistency on offense.
“We’ll get better,” Huggins said. “I told them in there that it’s like having a whole bunch of pieces on the floor. If they don’t fit together, you don’t have anything, do you? You just have a bunch of crap.
“If those pieces fit together, then you have something, and right now, we have too many pieces that don’t fit.”
The last time a team made 13 3-pointers against the Mountaineers came in last season’s Sweet 16 loss against Villanova. The Nittany Lions were shooting 50 percent from 3-point range at one point in the second half, many of them wide open looks from the corner.
“I said before that we didn’t make rotations [on defense],” Huggins said. “How many shots did we give up in the corner? You haven’t seen those in recent years, nobody gets those. We give those up, because we don’t make rotations.”
Sagaba Konate, playing on a sore knee, scored 13 of his 15 points in the second half. He was hit with two early fouls in the first half.
“I honestly didn’t want to play him as many minutes as we played him,” Huggins said. “He just wanted to play in the second half so much and we left him in there. I just hope we didn’t leave him in there too long.”
Wesley Harris, a starter all 37 games last season, and Lamont West combined for 12 points and five rebounds.
While the Mountaineers forced 18 turnovers, their defensive pressure was more full-court man-to-man than the customary trapping. They also turned it back over 16 times.
“You’re either going to go down or up and I think this team will go up,” Harler said. “I’m sure film study will be interesting with that last-second tip-in and how they continued to spread us out and drive right past us and shoot open threes all day.”
Culver held out
Huggins said freshman forward Derek Culver did not play because he wasn’t doing the right things in practice. Freshman guard Trey Doomes didn’t play because Huggins said he couldn’t find the right spot to insert him. … The attendance of 9,517 helped raise $9,344 for the American Red Cross Hurricane relief efforts.