MORGANTOWN -
The West Virginia University men's basketball team did more
than win just two games last week. WVU picked up solid wins for the old NCAA
tournament resume.
An 85-80 double overtime win against Kansas State in
Wichita, Kansas combined with a 77-66 victory over Miami in Morgantown helped
vault the Mountaineers into the top 50 in the latest RPI rankings. The RPI
takes into account a school's record combined with its strength of schedule.
West Virginia sits at 6-2 overall and is No. 47 in the RPI.
WVU is currently higher than Pitt (No. 50), Baylor (No. 53), Florida (No. 59),
Purdue (No. 63) and Georgetown (No. 66).
"These are two good wins," Head Coach Bob Huggins said. "Two
good wins against two quality teams."
"I would say this was a pretty good week," Senior Forward
Kevin Jones said. "We can't celebrate too long because we have just got to keep
on working and keep getting better."
WVU went blow for blow with Kansas State answering every
punch throughout each of the two overtime periods. There were 19 lead changes
and seven ties in that game. The Mountaineers clearly played with confidence
and that confidence is growing.
"We had a great week," Freshman Aaron Brown said. "This week
we have grown as a team and we got a lot better. We got much better, but we
still have a lot to work on over these next few weeks."
"It definitely boosts our confidence and gives us time to
reflect on what we've been doing right and what we've been doing wrong," Jones
said. "Hopefully we will correct a lot of mistakes and get better."
Time is a luxury they did not have late last week, but
suddenly have this week. The Mountaineers have a week between games due to
finals.
"We're going to spend two days working on us and working on
getting us better," Huggins said. "We finally made the right rotations. We're
going to work on that defensively. We're going to work on some other things we
are probably going to need down the road and then we're probably going to work
on assisting at the offensive end and then we will spend a couple of days
working on Saturday and Monday."
The Mountaineers will not have this much time between games
for the rest of the season. That makes this an important week for the team to
set itself up for a positive start to Big East play.
"Christmas break and finals week is a time for our team to
bond and really get better for the Big East run," Jones said. "We have to keep
playing at a high level like we have the last two games."
Huggins always does a good job of getting his players to
understand what is at stake in a given game. He did just that prior to each of
their last two games.
"Coach was actually stressing that these are very important
games that we needed to win," Brown said.
WVU needs to pile on to its win total in non-conference
play. There are four non-conference games remaining before the Big East opener
against Villanova.
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