As we prepare for another Huggins return to the OOD, be prepared for a slightly different variation of his typical WVU teams. This group of Mountaineers is stronger on offense than defense, especially shooting the ball, and features the best 3PT shooting of any Huggins team since he was at Cincinnati. A couple more uncharacteristic traits for this team are that they are above average (way above average actually) at protecting the ball, but below average at rebounding their own misses. His teams generally turn the ball over at a rate near 20%, but this one is under 14% for the season and has maintained that rate against good teams. However, this is his worst offensive rebounding team in over a decade and this team has been awful on the oboards against better competition. Defensively WVU is good at forcing turnovers, but pretty average at everything else. Its notable that WVU's best win is in Lubbock and against quality competition the defense has been well below the Huggins standard and the only one of the four factors they have gained an edge in is forcing turnovers.
Meanwhile, the Cats have 5 quality wins (according to kenpom), but have been awful in their two losses to Georgetown and KU which skews the numbers quite a bit. Still, K-State has consistently been solid at oboarding and (surprisingly) getting the the FT line. In the 5 wins against Top 100 kenpom teams the Cats have the edge in all 4 factors.
Huggins' team this year features a very good PG in Staten who is a distributor that can get to the rim and score (17 PPG), but is not a shooter (only 11 3PT attempts). However, there are 5 other players that have shot over 50 3PT attempts and all of them are hitting .357 or better. WVU's biggest threat is Eron Harris who is one of the league's best scorers (17 PPG, top 5 in PTs per 40) and hitting 40% on 3s (over 100 attempts). Henderson is WVU's 3rd scorer who shoots decent (12 PPG) and scores well in the paint. The best big and best rebounder is Williams (scores nearly 10 PPG) and the FR will be an interesting match-up for Gip. Dibo is a 6-7 shooter and decent rebounder to round out their starting 5. Brown is their best guard off the bench and a decent shooter and Adrian is their best big off the bench and another big that likes to shoot 3s.
This Huggins team is decent, but young and still learning to play defense. I think they'll have trouble in Manhattan and this should be a game K-State wins. While a grinder (low possession, both teams <1.0 PPP) wouldn't be a complete surprise, I think the Cats have a good day on 2PTs and 3PTs for their best offense of the Big 12 at around 1.15 ppp.
Cats 75 - Eers 66
