West Virginia has been one of this season’s biggest surprises in college basketball. Picked by the league’s coaches to finish in a tie for sixth in the Big 12, the Mountaineers are currently 7-4 and tied for third. Head coach Bob Huggins has fundamentally transformed the team’s playing style by adopting a high-pressure defense that aims to turn opponents over before they can set up their half-court offense. “We knew we could get teams to play different,” West Virginia assistant Larry Harrison recently told Bleacher Report. “Our goal is to get them out of their half-court offense. That’s what the goal was.”
The strategy has been successful. West Virginia leads the Big 12 in defensive turnover percentage, causing a turnover on 27.5 percent of its opponents’ possessions. Its high-paced, trapping defense has helped create steals on 14.5 percent of possessions in league play. Freshman Jevon Carter — an unranked, three-star recruit — has been a revelation, ranking 10th nationally in steal percentage by creating a turnover on 5.0 percent of possessions. Turnovers are an important part of keeping teams out of their half-court offenses and they’re necessary to West Virginia’s success. Because of it, the Mountaineers have the fourth-best defense in the Big 12 (allowing 98.8 points per 100 possessions) despite only having the league’s ninth-best defensive effective field goal percentage.
Despite all of the team’s success to this point of the season, West Virginia’s overall profile should be considered with a grain of salt. The Mountaineers have played a very favorable schedule in conference play and figure to have a much more difficult time in the weeks ahead. Four of West Virginia’s seven league wins have come against bottom-feeders Texas Tech and TCU, and it has only one win against teams ranked in Ken Pomeroy’s top 50. The concern lies in the remaining schedule. All seven of their remaining regular season games are against teams ranked in KenPom’s top 25, including a pair of games against both Kansas and Oklahoma State. The Mountaineers are favored in just two of those contests. The second concern relates to their offensive output, as West Virginia has had trouble scoring in the half-court (on Saturday, ESPN.com‘s Jeff Borzello highlighted those struggles in a series of tweets). Using their struggling offense, the Mountaineers are scoring just 0.82 points per possession on 39.3 percent shooting from the field. This means that opponents are packing the paint to force jumpers and prevent drives from the likes of Carter and senior Juwan Staten. In its four Big 12 losses, West Virginia has attempted 39.5 percent of its shots from behind the three-point line, where they are shooting just 28.0 percent in conference play.
None of this at all means that the Mountaineers are a bad team; like every team, they have their flaws. The troubles begin, though, when better opponents are able to protect the basketball and force West Virginia into its half-court sets. And yet, despite the difficult schedule, they should be able to pick up a couple more wins the rest of the way. Kansas has performed horribly against the press this season. Baylor and Texas have very high turnover rates despite their previous wins. Even with their limitations, don’t be shocked if West Virginia outperforms against its projected 2-5 finish. The Mountaineers’ high-pressure defense is tough to deal with and Juwan Staten is capable of taking over just about any game. Plus, they’ve already surprised all of us plenty this year — Huggins might just have some more magic tricks up his sleeve.