West Virginia Basketball: 2020-21 season preview for the Mountaineers
What are the right expectations and outlook for West Virginia Basketball this upcoming season?
In what could be his best West Virginia Basketball team since the 2010 Final Four squad, Bob Huggins and the Mountaineers look primed to contend – not just for a Big 12 championship, but for their first NCAA title in program history.
Last season, the Mountaineers underwent a bounce-back year after finishing with the most losses in a season in school history in 2018-19 – and in a way, both overachieved and underachieved in the process. Picked to finish fifth in last year’s Big 12 preseason poll, the Mountaineers entered the regular season unranked, before nearly sweeping through their non-conference schedule with a 12-1 record.
That streak’s only blemish was a two-point loss to St. John’s in the Big East/Big 12 Battle, but West Virginia’s resume of wins reversed any damage. With wins over some of the top mid-majors in the country – including Northern Iowa, Wichita State, and Rhode Island – and an upset victory in late December against then-number two Ohio State, the Mountaineers entered the Big 12 season ranked sixteenth in the country.
The Mountaineers carried that success into the first month of the new year, going 7-3 in their first ten games of 2020 and reaching as high as twelve in the national polls.
A slip-up at Oklahoma in early February would send West Virginia spiraling, however, as the team proceeded to lose six of their final nine and head into March unranked. Season-ending victories over Iowa State and Baylor put the Mountaineers back in the polls by what would have been the start of the Big 12 tournament, but the late-season skid was enough to place West Virginia at sixth in the Big 12 – worse than what they were picked to finish.
Despite the misstep, this was a better West Virginia team than what was expected – and what their record even indicates. In the final KenPom ratings of the year, the Mountaineers finished tenth out of 353 Div. I teams – higher than any team from the Big East, American, Pac-12, and SEC.
Entering the 2020-21 season, optimism is obviously high for the Mountaineers. In addition to their successful season last year, Bob Huggins returns nearly everyone from last year, including a pair of double-digit scorers and preseason All-Conference honorees in forwards Oscar Tshiebwe and Derek Culver.
The Mountaineers were deep last season – at least ten players averaged ten minutes or more a game – and they will continue to have that depth available this season. Jermaine Haley is the only starter gone from last season, and Huggins and his staff are bringing in a few newcomers who have the potential to provide an immediate impact.
There are high expectations for West Virginia this year, undoubtedly. They have been picked to finish third in the Big 12 preseason poll, behind Baylor and Kansas. In the most recent CBSSports’s preseason top 25 and 1 poll, Gary Parrish has them ranked fourteenth. Our own preseason power rankings at Busting Brackets have the Mountaineers at nineteen.
There are some questions about West Virginia, particularly regarding their offense. Their defense last year was stifling, where they ranked fifteenth in opponents’ point per game at 62.4. Their offense, however, is concerning – in those six losses in February, the Mountaineers averaged just under 58 points a game. If that scoring average were across the entire season, West Virginia would rank 346th in all of Div. I.
As it stands now, however, the Mountaineers have the depth, star power, and coaching capable of pulling off a deep postseason run and cementing themselves as a national contender. The root of that potential, undoubtedly, lies with Tshiebwe and Culver.