Some West Virginia Items

West Virginia has a basketball team, yes, but good luck finding much in the local news about it. Morgantown's daily paper, The Dominion Post, requires you to purchase an online subscription to read anything. Jerks.

-- This is the fun part for Beilein:

Swingman Devan Bawinkel, the quick-draw, rail-thin Illinoisan, said he was "stunned" when WVU began workouts to learn Beilein's structured system isn't just diabolical drawings.

"What I didn't expect was that you have to read other teammates to know where to go, what to do," Bawinkel said.

"You learn a lot of sets, but what you do in those sets is dictated by what the (teammate) in front of you does.

"It seems like a strict, set offense, but there's definitely a lot of freedom in it. Coach isn't hesitant to give guys the green light. It's shoot when you're open; pass when you're not. I never thought it would be like that."

-- Self Improvement Tour:

“There are some similarities with what they do and what other Big East teams do. There are some differences as well,” Beilein said. “When you have interchangeable players like they do they are tough to defend.”

For West Virginia, scoring has come from different players but junior guard Darris Nichols is emerging as one of the team’s go-to guys. Nichols had a team-high 15 in the 71-64 loss to Arkansas in the championship game of the Old Spice Classic and had a career-high 18 in the win against Western Michigan.

Nichols is averaging 12 points and four assists per game. Six-eight forward Joe Alexander is averaging 11.2 points and 3.2 rebounds per game while Frank Young has boosted his scoring average to 10.8 points per game after struggling through a 1-for-13 shooting slump from 3-point distance at the beginning of the season.