MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — After playing seven games over the first 20 days of the regular season, West Virginia had a week between its seventh and eighth contests.
It’s back to the routine the Mountaineers have been in for the majority of the campaign to this point as a stretch of five contests in 14 days continues at 7 p.m. Wednesday when WVU welcomes Coppin State to Hope Coliseum for a matchup that can be seen on ESPN+.
The Mountaineers (6-2) handled Mercyhurst 70-38 on Sunday to move forward from a two-game skid after losing to Clemson and Xavier in the Shiners Children’s Charleston Classic.
“We were saddened that we couldn’t get it done in Charleston, so we wanted to lock in for the week of practice we had, lock in and get back on a winning streak,” said WVU swingman Chance Moore, who led the team with 11 points in his third game this season. “It felt good.”
It marked the first time Moore played a home game and the WVU debut of 6-foot-8 forward Jackson Fields, who had been sidelined the first seven games due to an injured left hand.
Fields was one of three Mountaineers to score nine points against the Lakers.
“It felt great putting the uniform on and playing with my guys,” Fields said. “I’ve been doing it since the summer. I had a little mishap, but now I’m back, so it felt good.”
The addition of Moore and Fields increases West Virginia’s rotation to 10 players, while the team has already had seven different leading scorers.
“You play those first five games without Chance and Jackson, so you have eight players in your rotation,” WVU head coach Ross Hodge said. “That limits what you can do in practice, too, because the last thing you can do at that point is somebody step on an ankle or jam a finger and now you don’t even have enough guys to go play games.
“More than anything, it allowed us to have competitive practices against ourselves. That’s what we did Tuesday and Wednesday [of last weel]. We spent a lot of time playing the game against ourselves. You get in scout mode where you’re just literally preparing for teams you’re playing, [it’s] condensed and you don’t get to play the game as much as you want to play. We got to play more than we had and got back more into prep mode Friday and Saturday. It was nice to have everyone out there and nice to be able to practice.”
Guard Honor Huff is the only Mountaineer to lead the team in scoring more than once and averages a team-best 15.6 points. Forward Brenen Lorient follows at 11, with guard Jasper Floyd third at 9.1. Follow starters Treysen Eaglestaff (7.4) and Harlan Obioha (7.2).
Eaglestaff has 29 points across his last two games after scoring 30 in the first six. Obioha, a 7-footer, scored double figures in three of the first four contests, including 19 in a dominant effort against Pitt. Since, he has four field goals and 10 points in four games.
“The good of it is it’s an unselfish group that’s committed to making the right play and understanding the right play may not always involve them shooting and scoring,” Hodge said. “Where we can get better is getting more consistent production from everybody on the same night. You’re not always going to have everybody playing great on the same night, but if you can get a little more consistency across the board, then you can start seeing the evolution of an offense and more flow and comfort.
“There’s good and bad to it. The good of it is that there’s multiple guys that can score. The negative would be just more consistency from individuals on a night in basis, so when you’re going into a game and game-planning you can say we can take advantage of this.”
Limiting Mercyhurst to 38 points, the fewest WVU has allowed since a December 2017 victory over the same Coppin State program it faces Wednesday, left the Mountaineers surrendering an an average of 57.5 points and with the No. 1 scoring defense in all of college basketball.
WVU gave up 148 points in the setbacks to Clemson and Xavier and is allowing only 52 points on average in its six victories.
“In particular that Xavier game, our intent on what we would like to do was not good,” Hodge said, “and then you couple in your intent and you’re playing talent and you get what you saw. Our attentional to detail was good [Sunday]. We have to continue to get better and proven.”
Coppin State (2-8) has split its last four games after an 0-6 start. The Eagles lost to Maryland, La Salle, James Madison, South Florida, Central Michigan and South Alabama before getting into the win column.
A three-point victory at Rider last Tuesday marks the team’s lone win in nine tilts against Division I competition.
Whether or not Hodge manages playing time in a similar fashion to how he did against Mercyhurst when 10 players logged between 11 and 27 minutes will be based on performance and matchups, though trial and error will also factor in.
“A lot of it will be dictated by the players ability to execute what you’re asking them to do and the more people you get executing at the level you want, then you do have difficult decisions as a coach,” Hodge said. “I’ve said it before and it’s not just coach speak. Everybody wants instant, microwaveable results. It’ll take this group a little while. In particular, that’s why our defense has to anchor us. We’ll be finding ourselves and finding our rhythm and the more they play together, the better they will be.”