MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia will conclude their longest stretch of games away from the Coliseum Saturday night when the Mountaineers visit Xavier (5-3) in a game that is part of the Big East/Big 12 Battle. Tip time at the Cintas Center is set for 6:30 p.m. and the game will be televised by Fox Sports One.
Seven of the ten challenge games are complete and the Big 12 holds a 4-3 edge in the annual series.
The Mountaineers went 2-1 over Thanksgiving Weekend at the Phil Knight Legacy Tournament in Oregon. After dropping their opening game to eventual tournament champion Purdue, WVU defeated Portland State and Florida, advancing their record to 6-1.
“We had stretches that we played very well against Purdue,” said WVU head coach Bob Huggins. “We cut it to four, I think twice. We weren’t as consistent with it as we needed to be. That’s kind of what our team has been. We’ll go on big runs and then we kind of don’t go on any run for a while.”
After turning the ball over 12 times against Purdue, the Mountaineers gave the ball away 19 times against Portland State and 13 more in the finale vs. Florida.
“It is not one position. It is a united effort to throw the ball away, be it a guard, forward or center. They don’t really care which one. They will throw it away with the best of them. We’ve got to stop it. We force things. We make bad passes.
“If we throw it around like that against Xavier it is going to be a long night. They have a lot of veterans. And they will have it going a long way.”
The WVU coaching staff had an opportunity to scout Xavier in person last weekend. The Musketeers defeated Florida (90-83) and lost to No. 8 Duke and No. 6 Gonzaga by a combined 11 points at the PK85 event.
“They score. They really score. When you have a seven-footer [Jack Nunge] that can step out and make 3s at really an alarming rate for an opponent, to drag your big that far away from the goal is a tremendous advantage for them. They’ve got a bunch of guys that can make shots.
“Their guards have great size. They are going to play two guards, one is 6-foot-3, the other is 6-foot-4. They like to find ways to turn them loose at the rim because they are really good finishers because of their size. Then they are going to play a 7-footer and another 6-10, 6-11 at the same time. We haven’t played against that. Purdue didn’t have that. They are a really good basketball team and they are aged. He is not playing young guys. [Head coach Sean Miller] is playing guys that have played in big games, really for a lot of years.”
As the head coach at the University of Cincinnati from 1989-2005, Huggins posted an 8-8 record against the Bearcats’ crosstown rivals. Seven of those contests came against Huggins’ good friend and former Wheeling Central Catholic High School state championship coach Skip Prosser.
“Skip and I were very good friends. I think to the point where we both agreed that when we retired, him from Xavier and myself from UC, that we would get together once a week and just sit around, have a couple beers and talk. I’d go to his place one week, next week we would go to my place. We would sit around, talk, and talk about the state of college basketball or whatever it was that we would talk about that particular day. I was really looking forward to it. And unfortunately, Skip passed [in 2007].”