Nov 23, 2022 5 min read

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – What some might see as a fault in this year’s West Virginia University basketball team could well be what makes its special season end.

See, right now as it goes into the Phil Knight Legacy tournament in Portland, beginning with a Thanksgiving night matchup against Purdue, it is a team in search of its identity.

Once upon a time West Virginia was “Press Virginia” and became something of a national rage. Before that they became Big East champions and a Final Four qualifier by living on the edge with Da’Sean Butler making no fewer than five game-winning baskets.

But what is this season’s edition, one gerrymandered together through a few returning players, some junior college additions, a talented but searching freshman recruiting class and a gold mine of talent out of the transfer portal?

Is it a defensive team, a fast-break team, a jump-shooting team?

Is it none of the above or a combination of all three?

Its big men are there to rebound, not score. Tre Mitchell is there to shoot. Emmitt Matthews Jr. is there to slash to the basket. Erik Stevenson is there providing streaky shooting and an energy off which the entire team can exist.

Or is this a team that will go as its point guards – Kedrian Johnson and Joe Toussaint – go.

Through four games, all victories, one might lean toward the point guards, for they offer consistent and effective defense while showing the ability to cut out the turnovers which killed the Mountaineer offense last season and while getting the basketball into the right hands.

Hall of Fame coach Bob Huggins prefers to play one or the other, not wanting to get them into foul trouble, but he has already experimented having them on the floor together and they have given a different look to a team that morphs into different looks with every substitution.

With the WVU offense a year ago built upon shooting guards Taz Sherman and Sean McNeil, both seniors, Johnson was relied upon for his defense and deferred the leadership role to the two older players.

That didn’t work. Now he’s being more brash, exerting himself into a leadership role on a team where there is no shortage of veteran leaders that include Stevenson, Matthews and Toussaint.

But make no doubt, it is the point guards who spearhead the defense and who get the offense rolling.

While Johnson’s play was established last year and appreciated, the big surprise in this season’s reformed team has been the individual reformation of Toussaint, who has broken free from the shackles that bound him offensively the last couple of years at Iowa.

Last time out, against Penn, Toussaint scored a career-high 11 points in 20 minutes. In 67 games at Iowa, he scored in double figures only four times.

“They had two or three guys who were really good shooters and two or three guys who really expected that they were the ones who were supposed to shoot,” Huggins explained.

It worked at Iowa, especially since in 2021 they had the national Player of the Year in center Luke Garza and in 2022 they had a pair of NBA first-round draft selections in Keegan Murray and Patrick McCaffery.

McCaffery is the coach’s son.

“His role was more to push it in transition and, if he can, get it to the rim,” Huggins said. “It was not to take shots away from those other guys.”

Huggins did not recruit Toussaint for his scoring.

“I loved his energy,” Huggins admitted.

But without Sherman and McNeil this year, there would be no restrictions on Toussaint. Huggins said they never talked about getting him more shots, but Toussaint was ready to show that aspect of his game in prime time.

“My mindset going into games is to get assists. I’m a point guard,” Toussaint said. “I want to keep everybody happy. If I go out and score 10, 12 or 14 points, I want everyone else to have 10 or 11 as well.”

And that is really the way this team is starting to define itself. Against Penn, for example, Stevenson was on fire. He scored 21 points in 16 minutes, making 8 of 9 shots with 4 of 4 shooting from 3-point range.

“The beauty of this team is we have four, five, six, seven guys who can do that on any given night,” Stevenson said. “It was just my day.”

He wasn’t gunning, as one might expect when everything you throw up goes in.

“I was getting good looks because guys were getting me the ball in good spots,” he said. “I was trying not to be selfish. I was taking the right shots.”

That attitude could take WVU farther than anyone thought coming into the season.

“It makes coming into the gym every day enjoyable because you know you are going to play the right brand of basketball,” Stevenson said. “We have a bunch of old guys who have played high-level basketball and don’t care about scoring.”