First-year head coach Ross Hodge has brought his attention and focus to the defensive side of the ball in his first season with the Mountaineers. Now, the focus has to be on balancing the commitment of focus on the defensive side of the ball and getting into the flow of the game as more games are being played.
Senior guard Jasper Floyd recently discussed his insights on what the Mountaineers' focus on defense does to other teams, as well what it means for his team in finding an offense flow. Floyd has a lot of experience with Hodge’s mindset of centering his philosophy around team defense. The North Texas transfer spent last season with Hodge at North Texas before joining his head coach at WVU.
“It starts with our defense, we take a lot of people late into the shot clock, and it just compounds with our offense being a little slower. Sometimes the game just takes over, and we go late into the shot clock on defense, and then coming back down on offense, it slows us down a little bit, and that’s just the flow of the game sometimes," Floyd said.
"But that’s something that can also alter the game by us taking people late into the shot clock on defense, and if we speed the game up a little bit more,” Floyd commented.
Averaging 51.33 shots per game in the first three contests, the pace of the WVU offense could use a little spring to help get more quality shots earlier in the offensive shot clock. Ranking at 169th in offensive efficiency according to Teamrankings.com, with a 1.035 rating, the Mountaineers have struggled a bit on the offensive side of the ball. Offensive efficiency is calculated by taking the total points scored and dividing by the number of possessions and then multiplying that by 100 possessions to get the number of points scored per 100 possessions. Averaging 1.035 points per possession, or 103.5 points per 100 possessions, WVU is struggling a bit to make the most of its offensive possessions.
Taking on Pittsburgh in the 192nd edition of the Backyard Brawl, the Mountaineers will face in Pitt a team that, through the first three games of their season, is a better offense in terms of efficiency. With a team efficiency of 1.097 or 109.7 points per 100 possessions, the Panthers are ranked as the 114th offense in the country.
WVU takes on Pittsburgh tonight in Morgantown at 6 PM EST. and can be streamed on FS1. It will be interesting to see how Floyd and the WVU offense tries to balance the defensive focus and the offensive pace.