MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — For the first time since Esa Ahmad’s freshman season, the West Virginia men’s basketball team is not ranked in the Associated Press Top 25.
The Mountaineers (0-1), who opened the season at No. 13, fell to Buffalo 99-94 in the opener and tumbled out of the poll released Monday. It’s the first time since November 2015 the Mountaineers are not ranked, a string of 55 consecutive polls that fell two shy of setting the school record.
The school mark of 56 weeks was set from March 1956 to March 1960, which covers the senior season of “Hot” Rod Hundley to the senior season of Jerry West.
Buffalo moved into the rankings at No. 25 and the Mountaineers are the top team among those listed as also receiving votes.
West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said he wasn’t planning to use the national poll as some sort of wake-up call or motivational tool for his team.
“I tried to use the fact that if we stayed ranked in the top 25 for two more weeks, we would have set a school record,” Huggins said. “We would have broken the record from back in 1956 to 1960. To me, that’s kind of neat. It’s neat that when you finish your career, you can say I was a part of this or that, instead of saying I was a part of a team that won 15 games and people didn’t show up to watch us play.”
Bolden, Konate not expected to miss time
Cramps, hand injuries and sore knees are not expected to cut into Beetle Bolden or Sagaba Konate’s playing time this week, as West Virginia travels to the Myrtle Beach Invitational.
The schedule calls for three games in four days beginning with Thursday’s 7 p.m. matchup against Monmouth (0-2).
In a perfect world, Huggins would limit the minutes played by his two ailing juniors, except the Mountaineers (0-1) are playing much less than perfect at the moment.
“You take those two out and you saw what happened,” Huggins said Monday. “Those two guys have got to play.”
Without Bolden or Konate missing or limited during the final minutes of regulation, Buffalo rallied from 13 points down to tie the game before pulling off a 99-94 overtime upset.
Bolden sat out the final 2:55 of regulation and the entire overtime period with severe cramping. He also played with a heavily taped a left shooting hand (after stretching ligaments in his thumb) and a bandage above one eye (stitches resulting from a midgame collision).
Bolden finished with 21 points, four rebounds and four assists.
“He got a full-body cramp,” said Huggins in referecne to how much effort Bolden gave. “We had some other upperclassmen who sure as hell weren’t going to get a cramp.”
Konate has been dealing with a sore knee since the start of preseason practices.
Both players are limited to what they can do in practice.
“We’ve got to have some people step up and try to do a better of leading this group,” Huggins said. “I think Beetle will and I think Sags will, but it’s hard to listen to guys who haven’t been in practice.”
Picking a tournament
If not for Hurricane Maria, in 2017, the Mountaineers would be traveling to Puerto Rico this week instead of South Carolina.
Damage to the island forced the tournament to move to Myrtle Beach, where the Mountaineers might have a homefield advantage thanks to a large alumnus base.
“I knew we had a lot of fans in Myrtle Beach,” Huggins said. “I didn’t realize the amount of people we actually do have down there.”
In picking a holiday tournament, Huggins said the he and athletics director Shane Lyons consider an allotment of options each season. “We get recruited to go to multitudes of tournaments,” Huggins said. “I try and listen to our boosters and our fans on the places they like to go and the places they enjoy going to.”
In past years, the Mountaineers appeared in Las Vegas, San Juan, Orlando, Anaheim and Cancun. But the prestigious Maui Classic in Hawaii hasn’t been a landing spot.
“I don’t want to go to Hawaii, because we travel so much [during the Big 12 season],” Huggins said. “I think that would be a detriment to us. We try to play a little closer to home.
“We could go to Hawaii. We could go to Los Angeles. We could go to wherever. We’re a very sought-after team for those tournaments, but I think we have to be very careful about how much travel we are adding on to what we already are required to make.”