Three Points: WVU vs. USF

I. Get well soon, Joe Alexander: After the St. Johns game, Alexander was held out of practice and did not play at all today. Heard he will have an MRI tomorrow on his groin and will be day-to-day from there. Obviously we got the win without him today but we will not be a winning team in the Big East without a healthy Alexander.

II. Junk defense: Hey, remember the Catlett years? The Cat was a master of junk defenses, throwing out the diamond-and-one, triangle-and-two, and the Jedi mind trick defensive schemes. Well, Huggins’ defenses are not as junky, neither are Stan Heath’s, but there are definitely some out-of-the-ordinary tactics being used by both coaches. Come up with a combination that adds up to five, and Heath probably employed it today. 2-3, 1-3-1, 1-1-3, 1-2-2-1, 1-1-1-1-1 (okay, didn’t actually see that one). Huggins stuck mainly with the matchup zone we have seen the last few games, but in order to shut down Kentrell Gransberry on the inside, he used Joe Mazzulla to deny the ball while the other four played in sort of a match-up box, it was all kind of odd, but it did finally start working to keep the ball out of Gransberry’s hands (after he had already posted up 20+ points) but he could have scored all night until Huggs finally came up with a defense that was able to control him.

III. Joe Mazzulla: Speaking of, Mazzulla had a solid all-around game, as Huggs decided to solve Alexander’s absence with a smaller lineup, bringing in Mazzulla at 2-guard (I was calling for this clear back to last year, Mazzulla moves great without the ball.) This worked with USF because they really lack size besides Gransberry they have a lot of wing types, meaning we could easily put Ruoff at the 3 and Butler at the 4. I wouldn’t say it would work that well all the time, but it worked today. And Mazzula made a fortune from the foul line down the stretch, finishing 7-of-9 and with 11 total points in the game, matching a season-high career-high.

Bonus: Remember when WVU had to shoot well to win games? Today they shot 38.5% from the field, and made 7 of 23 treys but still managed to win despite USF’s 44.9% from the field. WVU did cash in at the stripe as a team hitting 22 of 26. A lot of those came late in the game but it’s also good to see WVU was able to draw the fouls today, which is usually not a strong point.