By Mickey Furfari
MORGANTOWN — Coach Bob Huggins believes West Virginia is ready to play Mountain State University in its only exhibition game of the 2008-09 here Saturday.
“We didn’t play as well as we wanted to play in the scrimmage (at Virginia last Saturday),” he said. “So I think they’re looking forward to playing somebody else.”
The tip-off is scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Coliseum. A large crowd is expected, since WVU will have a sellout for Saturday’s Big East football game against Cincinnati that kicks off at 7 p.m.
Reserve tickets for the basketball exhibition are $22 each. WVU students will be admitted upon presentation of a student ID card.
Huggins, in his second year as his alma mater’s head mentor, said Mountain State doesn’t have many players back from last year’s team.
“But they’re very good again,” he added. “They have scored 100 points or more in all three games that they’ve played.”
While West Virginia wound up winning last year’s exhibition, 88-65, he recalled it was a seven-point game with about five minutes left to play.
Huggins is anticipating another good, competitive contest.
He reasoned, “If it’s not a good game and not competitive, you get careless and don’t do the things you need to do. They gave us a great game a year ago.
“I thought it did us a lot of good. I think it did them a lot of good, too.”
Huggins said the coaches studied tapes of the Virginia scrimmage.
Then they broke down the things that the Mountaineers did right and also the things they didn’t do correctly.
“They do well with what you have to teach them,” he explained. “It’s early and it’s hard to get everything in. Our transition defense wasn’t very good (against U.Va). If we don’t have good transition defense on Saturday, it could be a long night for us.
“We’re going to have to get back and push the ball down the floor. So we just have to have time to get there.”
Huggins said veterans Joe Mazzulla, Alex Ruoff and Da’Sean Butler have really stood out over everybody else in preseason practice. Those three appear certain starters against Mountain State.
The coach mentioned that at times Wellington Smith, John Flowers and even freshmen Devin Ebanks and Kevin Jones have performed very well.
Huggins would like to get all of his players into the exhibition, depending on how the game goes.
“But we’ve got to win it first,” he said.
