The Grabbing, Holding, Pushing and Shoving is Frustrating WVU’s Bigs

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Playing in the post in basketball invites a lot of contact. With so many big bodies around the rim, players are going to bump and shove and play physical. The NCAA has made rule changes about what plays can and cannot do to each other when playing inside, but different refs call games differently and the refs are not perfect so sometimes some of the pushing and shoving down low goes uncalled.

West Virginia’s big men experienced a lot of this last Saturday against a physical St. John’s defense and again Thursday against an undersized Austin Peay lineup. WVU coach Bob Huggins said his big men, sophomore Derek Culver and freshman Oscar Tshiebwe, are getting frustrated with all the contact they are taking inside.

“What that guy (Culver) had to go through at the St. John’s game was borderline ridiculous, the grabbing, the holding, the pushing, the shoving,” Huggins said. “He’s been really good about not letting it bother him, playing through it.”

It appeared the frustration boiled over for Culver and Tshiebwe in the victory over the Governors. Both players average more than 20 minutes per game, but neither played more than 10 in the first half Thursday.

Huggins said they got frustrated with the contact and not getting the ball and were not being as active.

“I felt bad for Derek and Oscar to a degree today because they’re in there posting and guys are leaning on them, grabbing them after what they went through the other day,” Huggins said. “We’re like ‘we’re going to get it to you’ and we didn’t get it to them and we need to get it to them. When we finally got it in to Derek he made two great passes for wide-open shots. They can do some things down there, we’ve got to reward them.”

Tshiebwe bounced back in the second half, scoring 12 points and grabbing seven rebounds in 13 minutes, but Culver only scored four points and had five rebounds in the entire game.

“(Oscar) and Derek were standing around, I think they both got frustrated,” Huggins said. “Oscar got really active in the second half. We’ve been telling Oscar his strength is he runs, he runs better than any guy his size, probably, in the country. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?”

Tshiebwe said the duo could not think about the frustrations of the first half and needed to focus on winning the game.

“Derek Culver, he was a little bit off today. I was not off, in the first half I was just a little bit down,” Tshiebwe said. “I told Derek Culver that we’ve got to win the game. It doesn’t mean anything if we didn’t play in the first half, the second half is now, time to go dominate.”

Culver is 6-foot-10, 255 pounds, Tshiebwe is 6-foot-9, 258 pounds, they cannot exactly avoid a lot of contact down low due to just how big they are and how much space they take up. On Wednesday before the game, Culver said they need to try making quicker decisions in the post.

“You have to make your decisions quick,” Culver said. “This year they’re letting the off-man have a lot of contact, not the guy that’s on the ball guarding, the off-man that helps. I feel like if we make quicker decisions, me and Oscar, when we get in the post I feel like we’ll be better as a team.”

Culver also said he can tell that other teams start games being aggressive to see what the refs will let them get away with.

“They wait and see how the refs call it,” Culver said. “At first, they come out aggressive then once they come out aggressive they see how aggressive they can be until the refs call it.”

The Mountaineers’ next game will be at home Saturday against Nicholls. Tip-off from the WVU Coliseum is set for 2 p.m.