After dominating the WVSSAC Class AA boys basketball state tournament last month by leading in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocked s…
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Capital High School opened its doors in 1989. Thirty-six years later, there’s a photo hanging outside the gymnasium — the team picture of the …
Wheeling Central guard Eli Sancomb has had a week of which many basketball players would only dream.
HUNTINGTON — On a whim, Marshall men’s basketball coach Corny Jackson departed from his typical procedure.
HUNTINGTON -- For seven years, Cornelius Jackson sat on the bench and watched the Marshall men's basketball team create momentum and energy on the floor with its offense.
Marshall’s Erich Harding (11) defends against Pikeville on Oct. 27, 2024, at the Cam Henderson Center in Huntington.
MORGANTOWN — The West Virginia University women’s basketball team is ranked No. 16 in the nation this week because last year, with Mark Kellog…
MORGANTOWN — West Virginia will be without starting point guard Kedrian Johnson for Saturday’s game against No. 3 Kansas at the WVU Coliseum d…
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) — The way technology has made things today you can get into your car, drive from here to there and barely touch the steering wheel.
Parking? Sit back and relax. There are cars that will park themselves.
If only they could do that with a basketball team.
While they have come up with technology that limits what the driver of the car has to do, no one has figured out a way to put a point guard on automatic and, after all, it is the point guard that steers the offense.
At West Virginia, which goes into Christmas break at 10-2 after sleepwalking past Stony Brook, 75-64, on Thursday night, the point guard is Kedrian Johnson, and day by day you can see him growing into the position, being more comfortable with his passing, which is shooting, with his decision-making.
Not among those expected to carry a heavy scoring load, Keedy, as he's called — and you can spell it however you want — has scored 17 points three games ago and led WVU with 18 in the Stony Brook game.
He has become another defensive horror for opponents, who have no idea who on this balanced team will have the hot hand on any given night as Erik Stevenson, Tre Mitchell, Emmit Matthews Jr., and Joe Toussaint are all averaging double figures and Johnson sits right on the brink of breaking into that group with 9.6 points a game.
What has happened is that the Mountaineers have gone from last year's erratic, hit-or-miss offense to one that has become the second highest scoring team in the Big 12.
Why?
"Sharing the ball," Johnson answered.
And where does sharing the ball begin? With the point guard, whose fingerprints are all over all what the offense does.
"Playing as a team. I think that's the key," Johnson said.
He is the dealer at that poker table. The funny thing is that he was at point guard last year after being forced into full-time service after Deuce McBride headed off early to the NBA. The offense Johnson is running this year is the same one he ran last year, just with better results.
"It's the same offense," he acknowledged. "Just different players, more unselfish players who want to see each other succeed. If you buy in, the plays will work. Huggins has been running them for a long time. He told us it worked for the Final Four team, it can work for us."
Huggins has any number of options when it comes to combinations on the floor. For a while there was talk of having Keedy Johnson out there more with Joe Toussaint, both point guards, but Huggins feared that might lead to foul trouble for both and leave him without a real backup at crunch time.
Against Stony Brook, with Matthews out with injury and the offense lifeless, Huggins wound up playing a four-guard offense with Stevenson, Johnson, Toussaint and the shot-maker Seth Wilson.
It brought the necessary life out of the offense, helped no small amount by Wilson canning all three of his 3-point shots, and giving Huggins something else to think about.
"We put four guards in the game to speed things up and try and muck it up a little bit," Stevenson said. "I think it did its job. Obviously, we turned them over a little bit and forced up a couple of air balls. We kind of got the momentum on our side and pulled out a win."
"I think the only negative is us not rebounding, but we all can rebound," Toussaint said "On the outside, I love it. We can switch all the screens and pressure the ball. I feel there is tremendous upside to playing four guards."
The problem is that the Big 12 offers bigger, more athletic teams than Stony Brook and rebounding is going to be maybe the key to the season.
MORGANTOWN — Bob Huggins said, for the most part, his West Virginia team played its best game of the season defensively in its 81-70 win Satur…
