VIEWING INFO: ESPN, 5:00 CST.
Seth Fowler graduated from Texas in 1998. Since 2004, he has been helping home buyers and sellers in the DFW Metroplex. Whether new construction, existing homes, investment property, or land, he is your Real Estate Sherpa - guiding you through the process, making it an enjoyable experience. Based in Tarrant County, however, he will help connect you with a quality Realtor anywhere in Texas, the United States, or in the world. When looking to purchase or sell real estate in this new market, call Seth at 817.980.6636.
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Primer.
Today, Texas battles with West Virginia, another tough conference matchup despite the Mountaineers' record. Texas has had recent success against WV – they have won four of the last five and seven of the last nine meetings against the Mountaineers entering Saturday's contest, earning victories in three of their last four trips to Morgantown. West Virginia is at the bottom of the conference with Texas Tech, but we saw how difficult games are even against the cellar dwellers in the game against the Red Raiders.
After a really tough loss to Iowa State on Tuesday, the Longhorns are looking for redemption in their second-consecutive conference road test. At 11-7 and 1-4 in Big 12 play, West Virginia has all the makings of an "easy" game, but if Texas comes in thinking they're going to blow out the Mountaineers, they will lose. They need to treat this game like any other, because it will be hotly contested.
West Virginia Offense.
The Mountaineers are more of an offensive team than a defensive one, which isn't necessarily typical of a Bob Huggins team – they average just shy of 78 points per game, and rank 48th out of 363 teams in offensive net rating. South Carolina transfer guard Erik Stevenson leads the team in scoring at 13.2 points per game, tied with a player whose face Texas fans will recognize in transfer Tre Mitchell, who played for the Longhorns last year as a power forward. West Virginia doesn't rely on a singular guy to score points for them – they do so by committee, with five players averaging double digits.
The Mountaineers run a five-out motion offense, aka the "open post," People are always cutting, moving, and screening, which lends itself to multiple scorers as opposed to a heliocentric offense reliant on a single player to get most of the points. The stats back this up, as I mentioned earlier, because of the points being spread across different players. They're middle of the road in terms of pace, where they rank 121st in college basketball. The offense has clearly been effective this season, however, given their scoring numbers.
West Virginia Defense.
This iteration of the Bob Huggins Mountaineers doesn't feature the same level of defense as many of his previous teams. He's known for changing defensive philosophies to tailor to his personnel, and this year, his team's strength is creating opponents' turnovers, of which West Virginia forces 15.7 per game. They like to pressure the ball and play denial to keep opponents out of the paint as much as possible, partially due to their lacking physical defenders of size. This is obvious when you look at their amount of blocks per game – just 2.7, ranking them 255th in the country. It will likely be up to WV's bigs, Tre Mitchell and Jimmy Bell, to prevent drives to the cup.
Here's West Virginia's starting lineup.
What to watch for.
Texas vs. Tre Mitchell.
Mitchell, who defected from the Texas basketball program in 2022, landed in Morgantown, one of several inter-conference transfers that took place in 2022 (Jalen Bridges from WVU to Baylor, Tyrese Hunter from Iowa State to Texas, Kevin McCullar from Texas Tech to Kansas, etc). After a huge drama in which his disaffected father made a stink on Twitter, publicly criticizing Texas' former basketball coach on his inability to run an offense, Mitchell left the team in February after a blowout loss to Baylor in Waco. As Mitchell is a Pittsburgh native, the move makes sense from a geographical standpoint, and it seems he's found a place where he is a better culture fit. He was getting less than 20 minutes per game last season due to a myriad of factors; mostly, he couldn't handle physical defenders and turned the ball over quite a bit. But at WVU, he's tied for the lead in points per game, and seems to be much more effective. It will be interesting to see how the Longhorns handle him in this crucial conference clash.
West Virginia's Momentum.
Recently, the Mountaineers took down a really good TCU team, who was ranked 14th in the nation at the time, winning 74-65 behind the hot hand of Kedrian Johnson, who dropped 20 points. Jimmy Bell had a big outing as well, notching a double-double with 15 points and 12 boards. West Virginia is 11-7, but they're better than their record indicates, as they're still top 50 in the country in RPI. Of course, before their upset of TCU, they lost five games in a row::
• Kansas State, 82-76 OT
• Oklahoma State, 67-60
• no. 3 Kansas, 76-62
• Baylor, 83-78
• Oklahoma, 77-76
We'll see if the Longhorns can send them back to their losing ways.
Bounce Back Game for Texas.
Texas suffered a tough loss at the hands of Iowa State in Ames earlier this week, putting them at fourth in the conference at 4-2, behind a three-way tie between Kansas State, Kansas, and Iowa State. The whole team struggled in the most recent game outside of their post players – their guards shot abysmally and couldn't hit a thing from deep. Ideally, the bigs play the way they did against the Cyclones AND the guards bring their A-game, because in this kind of raucous road environment, they're going to need everything they have to emerge victorious. As I said earlier, throw the records out. This is going to be a rock fight.
Prediction/Best Bets.
West Virginia ML -120
I think West Virginia takes this one at home, not based on the fact that they have more talent than Texas does, but simply that home teams perform really well in this conference. It's been proven time and time again that there are no easy wins in the Big 12. There isn't a Georgetown or Nebraska to tally up easy Ws. Texas is going to have to be mentally tough to win this game today; we'll see what the veteran leadership is capable of when WV goes on its runs throughout the game and has the crowd going haywire. Whether or not the Longhorns can weather the storm and hang on in what will be a challenging contest will dictate the result.
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