West Virginia got a 70-57 win over Jacksonville State on Tuesday, but before the game, interim head coach Josh Eilert made a move.
Eilert turned to true freshman Ofri Naveh to start over Seth Wilson. Wilson had started the previous two games as well as WVU’s final exhibition of the year.
“More of an analytics thing,” Eilert said of the decision. “We really spent a lot of time trying to figure out the right lineup combinations. From a defensive rebounding perspective [Naveh] gave us a lot more there than Seth (Wilson) did. It looked like from our rotations we would be a lot better suited with him starting and Seth coming off the bench and correcting some of the rotations.”
Eilert said another piece to it is the limited depth they have, with only having eight guys available to play right now.
“We have limited numbers to work with so trying to figure out the right rotations from a substitution standpoint was probably the biggest factor in it.”
Naveh finished the game with three points and six rebounds, playing almost 29 minutes in Tuesday’s contest. Wilson finished with no points, and a rebound, while also dishing out a pair of assists. Wilson did not attempt a field goal.
“I told Seth after the game, he played 22 minutes, he’s a great shooter, I need him to shoot,” Eilert said. “He didn’t even get a field goal attempt up. We need Seth. We need Seth to bring that spark off the bench. When you go through loss, you try to analyze everything, you try to fix things, and that was one piece I thought I could play and see if it worked. And it seemed like it did.”
