West Virginia cannot catch a break.
This time around, it was the news the starting center Jesse Edwards would be sidelined for at least four weeks due to him needing surgery to repair a broken right wrist.
“I believe the surgery is tomorrow. I’m not sure the intricacies of the surgery or the names of the bones or anything like that. More than anything, I just wanted to know how quick he could recover and whether it’s something he would be back for us this year and it sounds like that will be the case, we’re looking about around a four-week recovery time,” interim head coach Josh Eilert said.
Eilert said now WVU will be basically playing without a center as there wasn’t anyone on the roster to backup Edwards. Akok Akok will ideally slide to that five position, and there will be an increased role for Pat Suemnick off the bench.
“You look at Akok at the five and I know it’s not his natural position by any means but he’s very serviceable at the five. I hate for him to play that many minutes at the five but we also have Pat Suemnick that has been waiting for his opportunity. I’m sure he didn’t want his opportunity to come this way but he’s going to have to step up to the plate for us and give us everything he’s got,” Eilert said.
Edwards’ injury was sustained on Saturday against UMass. Eilert could be seen talking to the officials throughout the game on the television broadcast, and he also pointed out after the game he spoke to the officials thinking someone was going to get hurt with how physical the game was and them not inserting themselves into things to stop it.
Eilert pointed some level of blame at them on Tuesday about the way the game was called, calling out the officials, and their lack of control over the way Edwards was attacked inside.
“I’ve said it over and over again, that’s people’s strategy against us. They know we don’t have a backup big and anybody with any depth is going to use their depth to be as physical as possible with Jesse and I think it started in the SMU game down in Fort Myers. That’s when they really started to take advantage of us and understand that would be our kryptonite by just completely using their depth to foul him,” Eilert said.
Eilert said the discrepancy in free throws stood out to him, considering how both teams trended in that category heading into the game.
“What I can do about it, there isn’t a lot I can do about it, but I can vocalize it the best I can. I knew going into that game, by the numbers, UMass was 346th in the country in opponents free throw attempts and we were second in the country in that same stat, only allowing our opponents to go to the line 10.7 times, consequently, they’re sending people to the line 26 times,” Eilert said.
“For whatever reason, [UMass head coach] Frank [Martin] found a way to flip the script on us and thy shot 20 more free throws. I knew going into it and I was very clear with our team, Frank, and his personality, I know how he’s going to approach this game. He’s going to use as much physicality as possible to negate some of our skill.”
Eilert said he spoke to the officials during the game, but that it had no impact.
“I warned the officials during the game, somebody’s going to get hurt. Eespecailly, the one I was concerned about was Jesse. I’m always concerned about Jesse the way they attack him,” Eilert said.
Eilert said he spoke to Martin after the game and the physical nature of the game came up during that conversation. He said looking at it from the opposition’s point of view, he understands the strategy.
“From a coaching perspective it makes sense. You feed off how the game is called to figure out whether you need to make adjustments. It was critical how the game was going to be called and they allowed it to happen and consequently, here I am, without an All-Big 12 center, I don’t have any depth for to replace,” Eilert said. “It’s unfortunate. It’s very unfortunate.”
“It was part of the conversation,” Eilert added of him and Martin. “I don’t think by any means they had any intention of hurting Jesse Edwards. They knew they were going to be very physical with Jesse Edwards and consequently, the way the game was called, he gets hurt.”
