By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — The Associated Press poll would tell you that West Virginia sent the nation’s No. 6 basketball team onto the Coliseum floor on Wednesday night against Duquesne.
The box score that the Associated Press sends with its story would tell you that they played like the No. 6 team in the country, beating Duquesne in every phase of the game except in committing turnovers while winning their sixth straight game, 68-39.
If you think the Mountaineers themselves think that at the present moment they are playing like the No. 6 team in America, you don’t know Coach Bob Huggins very well.
“Oh, I could come up here and lie to you all,” Huggins said to a media thong that seemed to be almost as big and that is half as knowledgeable as the crowd of 9,835. “Some guys do that and then go into the locker room and tell their team what they really think.
“Well, I’ve never done that. We’ve got to do a better job. It’s all encompassing. If you refuse to do a better job, you’ve got to be a cheerleader. If I wasn’t doing what I’m doing, if I was sitting out there, I’d rather watch the cheerleaders.”
This No. 6 ranking is really something of a mirage. You look at West Virginia and you see a good team, but is it real?
“I guess it says so on paper,” Kevin Jones, the do-everything forward who led West Virginia with 16 points and nine rebounds, seven of them off the offensive boards, said. “But we think we can get better at everything.”
“It doesn’t matter [where the Mountaineers are ranked],” guard Joe Mazzulla added. “We need to push ourselves to get getter every game, every practice. If we take care of ourselves, the rankings will take care of themselves.”
See, it’s barely December and no one remembers what happened in December.
Basketball is a game made for March. These are nothing more than practice games and, by nature, they are practice rankings, too.
No. 6, No. 26, does it matter before the first snowstorm of the year?
See at this time of year you can’t be playing for rankings.
“We’re playing for Bob Huggins,” said senior Wellington Smith, a man who has seen a lot of Marches come and go, some as Sweet as 16, some quite sour.
“We play just for him. If we make him happy, it makes us happy.”
And making Bob Huggins happy isn’t easy.
Oh, he liked his defense in this game, which was a sign of progress. But there was still a lot not to like, beginning with some reckless three-point shooting and some dismal play by Devin Ebanks, whose left hand is swollen and wrapped without much of an explanation as to why.
And Ebanks has not been around for interviews, either, since beginning to have the problem with that hand.
You could tell Huggins was unhappy with him after he went 2 for 10 shooting, scored four points and had three turnovers.
“Good players make it look easy,” Huggins said. “He had some good looks and missed the shots. Then he had some looks and didn’t shoot because he’s missed. He made it a hard game. It’s not a lot of fun when you make it hard.
“Oh, some guys enjoy it,” Huggins continued, “but their teammates don’t and their coach doesn’t.”
But this wasn’t just about Ebanks. Huggins was in a philosophical mood. He talked about himself, but he was talking for his players to hear.
“You know, when I wanted to learn I could learn pretty good,” he said. “When I didn’t want to learn, it was tough. I could pick up a basketball magazine and read it cover to cover. But if I had a family living magazine, I struggled.”
The lesson, if his players want to get better, if they want to learn to take good shots, not bad, if they want to learn to play defense, to stop backdoor cuts, if they want to learn to rebound and box out, he’ll provide the magazine but they have to do the reading.
“No one ever got a rebound without trying,” Huggins said. “That’s what I tell the guys. Get one, you might like it.”
Oh, by the way, West Virginia got 45 rebounds last night. They grabbed 20 off the offensive boards, and gave Duquesne eight.
That may sound good to you, but Huggins wanted those eight rebounds that Duquesne got in his team’s hands.
It’s all in how you look at things.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
