Coaching WVU's Bigs Requires Full Team Effort

Take a moment to reminisce on the most notable, former WVU Men's Basketball players.

Almost guaranteed, none of them are bigs. 

Instead, they've been small, crafty, United States-born, basketball-centric guards adept at dribbling since age four. A dime-a-dozen player coming up through the college ranks to fine-tune his game under a Hall of Fame coach. Bob Huggins has a history of elevating that player type.

A more rare sight: two foreign-raised, Division I basketball transplants who outgrew soccer and tennis... or a high school offensive lineman and JUCO transfer who cut close to 100 pounds to play for Bob Huggins instead of Neal Brown.

Imagine all three of those examples on the same team. 

Huggins has been tasked with not only teaching Mo Wague, James Okonkwo, and Jimmy Bell the West Virginia way, but also the bare bones fundamentals of the game. That's the true test of an elite coach, but at times, even one of Hall of Fame-caliber needs help.

"Mo was only in this country one year before he came here," Huggins said. "James came over here not really knowing much of anything. He was a tennis player.

"Those two guys weren't taught to play any way," Huggins added of the two's basketball IQ. "James has really good hand-eye coordination, or he wouldn't have been able to play tennis at that size. Mo was a soccer player. Soccer players have good feet... [Wague and Okonkwo] definitely have some advantages that maybe some other guys who came in here didn't."

Neither Wague nor Okonkwo had significant time in basketball, or the United States for that matter, before Huggins brought them into the gold and blue fold. Wague had sized out of soccer in Mali; Okonkwo was slamming down tennis serves in England and wanted more opportunity in a new country. 

These two players have been building their basketball prowess up from the studs and foundation. Huggins said that he can see Okonkwo's tennis hand-eye coordination during rebounds and blocks and Wague's soccer footwork at play in the paint; cross-training at its finest.

"Some guys are naturally more athletically-gifted, but that doesn't make them better basketball players," Huggins added. "That's the challenge: to get those guys to work at their craft."

It's a challenge that, at times, even requires teammate assistance to drill home. Inside the WVU basketball practice facility, you'll see head coach Huggins drawing up plays, but you'll also hear the rising voices of veteran guards Joe Toussaint and Erik Stevenson directing.

"I used to get on them a lot," Toussaint said of interacting with Wague and Okonkwo during the summer. "I use to scream at them, but you can't scream at every player. There's a certain way you have to talk to people."

"So I just go up to them, when they make mistakes, like, 'It's alright. Get the next one. You know what to do.'" Toussaint said. "Erik [Stevenson] used to get on them a lot too. He doesn't do that as much. He's telling them, 'Alright. Next play.' I feel like that really built their confidence up."

The learning process isn't necessarily built to be modeled by force, and Toussaint learned that the hard way. Not every suggestion he put forth stuck. His tone was off. He wasn't advising from a place that put weight into the learning styles of Wague and Okonkwo, who hadn't previously been coached with a harsh hand.

"I realized that early in the season," Toussaint said of adapting the way he assisted the new players. "Erik, not as much. I realized that real early. I also had a talk with [graduate assistant Alex] Ruoff. He was telling me that if I want to play basketball for a long time, you've just got to watch how you say things. Watch how you talk to people and how they respond to you."

Now, Toussaint and Stevenson have adapted their coaching styles to better cater to Wague and Okonkwo, and the team has benefitted.

"They always talked decently, like not yelling," Wague said of the two's coaching styles. "I've always been like that. I've always listened to my teammates, whether they're doing better than me or not. I'm just trying to listen to everybody and take pieces from everybody and just see their point of views too.

"It's still the same," Wague added. "Even in JUCO, I would listen to my teammates and everyone around, just picking up little pieces from everybody else. Now, it's just more focused on talking about specific things now than it was in JUCO."

Okonkwo, who briefly played for West Virginia's Beckley Prep IJN, was tasked with watching film of former Mountaineer power forward Sagaba Konate, and his film room work is already translating to the WVU Coliseum.

"I think Coach trusts me more," Okonkwo said. "He knows what he puts me in to do, so now I have more confidence in that role. Confidence is going up."

"He just continues to get better and better and I think our other guys have started to understand how talented he is," Huggins said of Okonkwo's development. "I think they are much more encouraged by where he could go, but I think more importantly, they’re going to be encouraging him to continue to improve and continue to work at it.”

Huggins also attributes Okonkwo and Wague's significant improvement to practicing against 6-10, brick wall forward Jimmy Bell every day. Facing Bell in the paint requires crafty ball movement and footwork... two factors that Okonkwo and Wague already have experience in.

"I think Mo [Wague] is starting to learn that going in there and pushing on Jimmy [Bell] is not going to help much," Huggins said. "He can use his length, he can use his footwork, to be able to make up for that.

"They go after each other pretty good," Huggins added of Bell and Okonkwo's practice reps. "Jimmy's been great for those other two guys. In the post, your lower body is more important than your upper body. After Jimmy's knocked you out of the lane a few times, you start to realize that I've got to get a better base here."

Wague agreed, saying, "Playing against Jimmy is going to get you ready for just about anybody in the country."