(Bob Huggins pregame press conference)
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The carpet will be rolled out for Bob Huggins and the Mountaineers for the first time in 19 days when WVU hosts Navy Wednesday evening. Tip time is set for 7 p.m. and the game will be televised by ESPNU.
West Virginia suffered their second loss of the season Saturday night at Xavier, 84-74. The Musketeers outscored the Mountaineers by 17 points in the second half and Xavier scored 17 points off 12 WVU turnovers.
“We just threw the ball around. We didn’t pass the ball. We threw the ball. We spent a good deal of time yesterday trying to maybe sure up some of our half court sets that have been really good to us in the past that we made shambles of,” said WVU head coach Bob Huggins.
“I just feel like we beat ourselves. We watched film. Everybody watched it individually and we just watched it as a team yesterday. There’s nothing we can’t change. We just had a couple mental lapses on the defensive end and on the offensive end as well,” said WVU senior guard Joe Toussaint.
“I am always the guy to take the blame no matter what it is. I always take the blame and I will take what comes with it. I have always been like that since I was a young kid.”
In the loss at Xavier, West Virginia was beaten on the boards, 34-28. It marked the fourth time in eight games that the Mountaineers were outrebounded by their opponent.
“I think we are starting to get a little bit better offensively but defensively, we are horrible. We’ve got to get so much better,” Huggins said.
“There’s a myriad of things that we don’t do that we have done very well in the past.”
Navy (5-3) has dropped consecutive games after a 5-1 start. The Midshipmen feature a balanced offensive attack with seven players averaging at least 6.6 points per game. Navy posted a 21-11 record last season.
“The majority of the service [academy] teams, they execute really well. They just don’t have the size that the people, for instance in our league, would have. But they are skilled and very disciplined,” Huggins said.
“I remember they beat Virginia last year. They’re a solid team all around. We’re not going to speed them up. They are very well-coached and disciplined. They are not going to do uncharacteristic things. They are not going to go off on their own, try to go one-on-one. They are going to stick to their team basketball,” Toussaint said.
West Virginia has played just over a quarter of their regular season schedule and their roster and rotations with nine newcomers continue to evolve.
“To think that our game is all the same, it is not. It is not even close. They have to make adjustments. And then you throw injuries on there, Pat [Sumenick] has been injured. Pat is just now starting to come back. Pat hasn’t played because Pat hasn’t been ready to play. When you look at all the things that those guys have to overcome, yeah, it is going to take some time. It is going to take more time than what certainly I would have wanted.”