Minus Paige & Miles, West Virginia is forced to change

Over the past two seasons, West Virginia has prided itself on being the deepest team in any single game. Players on the team believe head coach Bob Huggins can plug in anyone on the roster at anytime to yield the same successful results.

On Tuesday night, the depth of West Virginia was tested at Texas.

Going into the game, Huggins and his team knew they would be without guard Daxter Miles Jr., after he strained his right hamstring over the weekend in a win against TCU. Down to four guards, Huggins inserted Teyvon Myers into the starting lineup in order to keep Jaysean Paige and Tarik Phillip in their preferred roles of coming off the bench.

The game started promising when Phillip entered to score six straight points to help West Virginia build a 12-4 early advantage, but that’s about as good as it would get for the Mountaineers.

Around the nine-minute mark of the first half, Paige turned his ankle when he stepped on the foot of forward Elijah Macon. Paige tried to return in the second half, but ended up only playing six minutes for the entire game, forcing Huggins to juggle rotations with only three guards – Phillip, Myers and Jevon Carter – at his disposal.

“What was deflating was seeing Jaysean (Paige) sitting there with his ankle on ice,” Huggins said. “He’s been as good of a player as there is in the league for the last three or four weeks. Take anyone’s best player out of the deal and they won’t be as good.”

Entering Tuesday, Paige led West Virginia in scoring averaging 14 points per game. He registered double figures in each of team’s last seven games also.

West Virginia was forced to find offense elsewhere while lacking its most consistent perimeter threat in Paige and another capable three-point shooter in Miles.

Phillip made up for some of the three-point production making three of five attempts from behind the three-point line. He had 19 points to lead the team, but it wasn’t enough.

Defensively, West Virginia didn’t rattle Texas with its press because without the speed of Paige and Miles, Huggins had to use frontcourt players out of position. At times, West Virginia switched to a zone, but Texas made open jump shots including six consecutive three-pointers to close the first half.

“Our pressure isn’t going to bother many people when two of my guards are out,” Huggins said.

“We got tired. You spend so much energy playing the way we play and then I tried to play zone, which was obviously not the right thing to do, they (Texas) made shots. Give them credit. They made shots. When they make shots, they’re pretty good.”

Huggins and West Virginia have to hope Paige or Miles or both get healthy quickly with Oklahoma coming to Morgantown on Saturday.

Oklahoma is the top scoring team in the Big 12, so West Virginia will need the production of Paige to help keep pace with the Sooners. Additionally because Oklahoma leads the country in three-point percentage, West Virginia would prefer to press as opposed to playing zone, which would leave open shots for Buddy Hield and company.