Quick Hits: Utah's Defense, the Parity of the Big 12 Conference + More

The West Virginia Mountaineers (14-8, 5-6) host the Utah Utes (13-9, 5-6) Saturday evening. Tip-off is set for 5:00 p.m. EST and the action will stream on ESPN+.

Utah’s versatile defense

I think for them, it’s just keeping you off balance. They run triangle, they run box, they run 2-3 zone, they run man, they’ll guard some guys, not guard some other guys, so its just a lot to prepare for – that’s the hardest part.

Even like yesterday, coming off a long road trip, get back at 3:30 in the morning, so you can’t really do a lot yesterday, so today is our only prep of trying to go through all this type of stuff. You do a little bit, a very little bit in the summertime/fall, like, ‘hey, just in case,’ you do a couple of reps, but nobody really does that a lot, so you haven’t spent much time on it from a preparation standpoint. Otherwise, everything else you cover in the summer and the fall and then when somebody uses it you have it at least ready. We’ve worked on it before. This is triangle and box and one you just don’t see it very often, so that’s something that just takes a little more time.

Managing the ups and downs of freshman guards KJ Tenner and Jonathan Powell

I think for them, and for everybody, but for freshman it is a long year for them and they’ve made a lot of adjustments up to this point and now its just a little longer than maybe they’re used to, especially in JP’s case, he’s having to play a lot of minutes, so for us we’re trying to do everything we can to keep them fresh, keep them confident because we need both of them to be good for us because they both play really important roles for this team.

The parity of the Big 12 Conference

This is a really good league, like a lot of leagues, top to bottom anybody can beat anybody. But I think for us, it’s always been really pretty narrow focused. We have to play good for the 40 minutes that’s right in front of us. When we’ve done that, we’ve been pretty successful, when we’ve come up a little short of that, we’ve come up on the wrong end. Again, our goal this week is we’ve got a huge game against Utah, and we need to play well, and if you don’t, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to get beat. That’s just what this league is. We got a home stretch coming up here, a big stretch for us. We’ve had some success to put us in position to be in position, but now you got to finish and that’s a big deal for us. So, this 40 minutes on Saturday is a big home game, like they all are, but the most important is the next one and that’s Utah on Saturday.

Coal Rush game

I’m excited. I know it’s a big game. Home games our huge for us and we have a great home court advantage, especially when the crowd is really engaged and into it and we have one of the louder buildings not only in the league but in the country and that impacts your chances of winning when you’re at home and you got a crowd that can disrupt opponents just with the shear noise and not only that it impacts your own team just from an energy standpoint. So, excited to be at home, excited to have a sellout, should be a great atmosphere.

Utah’s versatile defense

Managing the ups and downs of freshman guards KJ Tenner and Jonathan Powell

The parity of the Big 12 Conference

Coal Rush game

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