WVU men's basketball got back to action after over a week off on Monday as they hosted Mississippi Valley State at the Hope Coliseum in the last non-conference game on the schedule. The Mountaineers ran away with a victory against a Delta Devils team that has just one win to their name this season, cruising to an 86-51 win in a game that never seemed competitive. Here are a few realistic takeaways from the final game the Mountaineers will play before their Big 12 slate begins.
Little Was Learned From This Win
Don't get me wrong here. You love to get this win going into the holiday break, and every win matters when the win column is evaluated in March. But Mississippi Valley State entered the game as one of the worst teams in Division 1 basketball by nearly every statistic and data point. This is a game West Virginia should win, and nothing we saw suggests that we should expect the glaring issues we saw from the Mountaineers in their last four non-conference Power 4 games to be completely fixed.
Now, that's not to say the Mountaineers haven't gotten it together after that Ohio State loss, which follow a Wake Forest loss, which followed Xavier and Clemson losses. But we won't know until Big 12 play starts in January whether the problems that caused those issues have found solutions, because even a 36-point win against the Delta Devils tells us little about what will happen when they take the floor in Ames against Iowa State on January 2.
Treysen Eaglestaff drama continues
Well, we're not quite sure yet what to make of Treysen Eaglestaff. He was a highly-touted scorer when WVU landed him out of the transfer portal, but scored 10-or-more points just once in his first six games this season. Since then? He has registered games with the following scoring totals: 20 points, nine points, 11 points, zero points, 23 points, five points, and 23 points, in that order. There are flashes of a dangerous scorer, but no consistency.
In that latter 23-point performance on Monday, Eaglestaff shot 9-of-16 from the field, including 4-of-10 on three-pointers. He also hauled in eight rebounds. Those are the type of performances WVU needs to have from Eaglestaff, as he was one of the players brought be a primary offensive threat. Honor Huff can't continue to do it alone.
Three-Point Shooting Looked Better For West Virginia
The Mountaineers are shooting 35 percent from three-point range this season, and had a pretty rough stretch of games in November and December before the Ohio State match-up where they were getting some really inefficient shooting from behind-the-arc. But Huff and Eaglestaff each went 4-of-10 from three-point range on Monday, while Amir Jenkins went 2-of-2, DJ Thomas went 1-of-1, and Jasper Floyd went 1-of-3. Overall, they were 44% from behind-the-arc. This team gets a lot more dangerous when they're able to shoot efficiently from deep, because Hodge likes to limit possessions, so they need to keep that shooting efficient.