MMorgantown, West Virginia – With the Big 12 Pre-Season poll coming out a little under a week ago and the AP Top 25 coming out yesterday, West Virginia is receiving NO love from the press. The way Huggins has been talking about the players this year makes me believe that this could be a SNEAKY good team.
Huggins has stated that this team knows how to compete and sees the players’ mentality this season as similar to his own. He also said this about this year’s team to the psyche of last year’s season:
“I think our guys have fantastic attitudes, their work ethic has been really good. It wasn’t so much that a year ago.”
This is interesting due to the fact that maybe a poor mentality was the downfall of last season’s team. The team started out 11-1 with their sole loss at that point of the season coming to Marquette. The team then fell to 16-17 (4-14) dropping 16 of their next 20 games, leaving them out of not only the NCAA Tournament but the NIT as well.
Huggins also had this to say about last year’s team:
“Obviously we are going to be a lot better. We had a bad year last year. I think our attitudes our better. I think we’ve gained by subtraction in some regards.”
This makes me believe that many of the players did not want to be there, and were being a hindrance to the team. With this, all the momentum they had gained before conference play vanished and the team started playing like they NEVER played basketball in their lives.
Now, this is an entirely new season, and I have faith Huggins will get the team back on track. With how positive Huggs has been speaking about each of the players, it makes me believe that West Virginia WILL make a run in the Big 12, and make the NCAA tournament, finishing above .500.
