Can West Virginia’s pressure affect Kentucky?

West Virginia basketball coach Bob Huggins is not going to apologize for what skeptics may call “winning ugly.”

Like any coach, he will tell you that no win is ugly.  Huggins has gotten creative and most knowledgeable people inside of college basketball know that one of his major talents is to adjust on the fly.

He did that last November when he knew the fruits of his last two recruiting efforts were about to pay off by implementing a full-court pressing system that called on 11 players to average double figures in minutes.

The result has been an overwhelming success as the Mountaineers finished tied for fourth in the Big 12. And after wins over Buffalo and Maryland over the weekend, Huggins is back in the Sweet 16 where he will face old friend John Calipari and his Kentucky Wildcats, who are in hot pursuit of perfection.

“The very first day we started, we told them that we can play a bunch of guys, but you’re going to have to play really, really hard, and it’s going to be hard,” said Huggins of the Mountaineers’ buy-in to his ultra-aggressive system. “But we can do it. We can get you guys in the game. You can all have playing time. You can all experience playing and have some success. But it’s going to be hard.”

Sunday night defined how the hard work and mental discipline of this West Virginia team had paid off.  The Mountaineers dialed up their pressure and literally wore Maryland out mentally and physically in their 69-59 win.  The relentlessness saw the Terps turn the ball over 23 times, which led to 15 West Virginia steals and 26 points off turnovers.

Then there was the hard-nosed play on the offensive glass which saw West Virginia claim 16 points off 14 offensive boards.

“I love the fact that we cannot make shots and still win, still find ways to score,” said Huggins of how West Virginia housed 16 more shots, but only shot 40 percent, “We get 14 offensive rebounds. We’ve led the country in offensive rebounds. And a lot of those things come down to offensive rebounding and the pressure. It comes down to — hard work. It’s hard.”

Every time, the Terps looked like they might challenge or even overtake WVU in the second half, the Mountaineers defense responded and turned turnovers into points and picked up key stick-backs on the glass.

“It comes down to having a lot of heart and that’s what I told our guys at halftime,” Huggins said. “I said, ‘you know, if you guys want to play pretty we’re going to lose. We’ve gotta do what we do.’  They came out the second half and did a pretty good job of it.”

Maryland cut the lead to one on two occasions midway through the second half, but guard Tarik Phillip and big-man Devin Williams had answers.  Williams finished with 16 points and 10 boards to lead four Mountaineers in double figures.  Phillip is one of a laundry list of guards that steps up and makes plays that sometimes do not show up in the box scores.  He had six points and four boards in 11 minutes and did it quietly, but efficiently in a key run.

The return of Gary Browne and Juwan Staten after late season injuries has fueled WVU as well.  Browne had 14 points on three triples with five steals. Eleven of his 14 came in the second half as his tenacity was a spark plug for Huggins.

To underscore how successful the Mountaineers’ press was, Maryland had 67 possessions, scored on 24, but West Virginia turned them over on 23.  Browne, a savvy veteran, sensed Maryland’s guards starting to tire midway through the second half — and then WVU immediately took the game over as the Terps wilted under the pressure.

“With their guards worn out, that was a big key right there for us,” Browne said. “We told our guys, we make sure they he doesn’t catch the ball.  We are going to have other guys that can make great decisions and make decisions. That’s what we’ve been doing all year and it worked today. He got tired and I mean teams like that, they don’t know because they don’t watch us play all year.”

Staten is an emotional leader, who had suffered a late-season injury along with Browne.  It caused the Mountaineers to struggle some, but they stayed the course.  The style of play Huggins has employed was able to help WVU to hide the duo a little more than if this was a half-court team that played at a slower pace.  Staten is the backbone and catalyst as well as a character player in whom Huggins trusts.

“We came into the tournament with a game plan and we said all we gotta do is get that first one,” said Staten, “We didn’t think teams would be able to prepare for our pressure. Early in the game they we’re making good decisions. They were breaking our press. They were looking good, but they were using a lot more energy than they had to use all year. So we knew that at some point they would break.”

Staten raises a great point.  Maryland hasn’t seen this type of pressure and numbers coming at them in the Big Ten and neither has Kentucky in the SEC.  Thursday night’s game will be a test of whether 11 Mountaineers, who are guard heavy, speedy, and in impeccably good physical shape, can tire the depth of Kentucky, who has big guards and a fortress of seven-footers across the baseline.

“We are just playing our hearts out and pretty much we just gotta get back, prepare, focus and it’s another team,” mused Williams of Kentucky, “They put their drawers on the same way we do. So that’s pretty much it. We’ve just got to prepare, and get our minds right.”