When West Virginia hosts UAB on Saturday, the Mountaineers are going to look to heavily rely upon Kedrian Johnson.
UAB (7-1) heads to Morgantown on Saturday evening in search of redemption for last seasons 65-59 loss to the Mountaineers. In that game, Johnson scored only nine points, but it was his defense which helped propel West Virginia (7-2) to the victory.
This season, UAB ranks fourth in the country in scoring offense, averaging just over 90 points per game. A big part of that is due to the play of Jordan Walker.
Walker leads the country in scoring, averaging 25.7 points per game this season, and leads the nation in three-pointers made per game.
Last year, Johnson and company were able to hold Walker to 13 points, while he made only six of his 20 attempted field goals.
“What we’re hoping is Keddy can do as good a job this year as he did a year ago,” West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins said. “He’s the key, he’s the key for us.”
Walker averaged 20.7 points per game this season, and the 13 he scored last season against West Virginia were his sixth-lowest scoring total in the 34 total games he played last year. Walker’s seven turnovers against West Virginia a year ago were his second-highest total of last season as well.
Huggins said West Virginia was successful against Walker because, “we put [Johnson] on him.”
“I think [Johnson] can match his speed. He (Walker) just runs away from people,” Huggins said. And he (Johnson) did a great job of staying on him, and [Johnson] has the same kind of speed up and down the floor as he (Walker) does.”
So far this season, West Virginia is 39th in the country in turnovers forced per game with just over 17. On the other hand, UAB is turning the ball over 12.2 times per game this year, which ranks 111th in the country.
The Mountaineers are going to have to get better on defense especially against the Blazers who are shooting 49% from the field on the year, and who have scored more than 100 points twice.
“It hasn’t been very good and it needs to be a lot better,” Huggins said. “The athleticism that we have, there’s no reason why we can’t stay in front of people. We have better size than we’ve had in a while, so we should be able to do a better job around the rim,” Huggins said.
With West Virginia attacking the transfer portal this past offseason, Huggins said they got a lot of guys who can score and their primary focus in the past has been scoring. He wants those guys to try and turn their focus to the defensive end.
“I think we’ve got a lot of guys who can score and have pretty much scored their whole career,” Huggins said. “Their focus has been almost solely offensively when you really need them to be able to stay in front of people and guard.”
West Virginia and UAB is set to tip-off eat 6 p.m. on Saturday, and the game will be televised on ESPN+.
Photo by Aaron Parker, Blue Gold Sports
