Morgantown, West Virginia – College basketball in March is extraordinarily unpredictable and anything can/will happen during the NCAA Tournament, but the West Virginia Mountaineers are peaking at precisely the right time and a deep run during March Madness now feels like a real possibility.
With that said, everything will have to fall in place perfectly. West Virginia – particularly Taz Sherman, Sean McNeil and Deuce McBride – will need to continue to hit perimeter shots in order to beat some of the best teams in the country.
Today is Game 3 in the six game Big 12 Conference Gauntlet that the Mountaineers are scheduled to face to end the season. The two Baylor games have been postponed and are up in the air, but Bob Huggins expects them to be played.
A win today would put West Virginia in excellent position to earn one of the top seeds in the Big 12 Conference Tournament. Currently in 2nd place at 14-5 overall and 7-3 in conference play, the Mountaineers are behind only undefeated Baylor and can create some separation from the rest of the elite teams in the Big 12 (Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and Texas Tech) with a victory at home against Oklahoma.
West Virginia has won three in a row and has played better defensively in addition to adapting a new offensive strategy that spreads the floor and creates more open perimeter shots.
“I’m just trying to win, man,” Huggins said. “I’m trying to put the best people we have available out there to do what they can do. We need them all to guard, but we need them all to do what they can do. We’ll keep putting them out there as long as they produce.”
Today’s game against Oklahoma is huge for the Mountaineers, but really, every game will be critical for the remainder of the season. Winning in March has as much to do with mentality as it does physicality, and West Virginia is tough in both ways.
Bob Huggins once again has a team ready to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament and compete for that elusive National Championship.
