WVU Basketball Has Elite Defensive Metrics Entering Big 12 Play

It doesn’t take very long watching WVU basketball to see that the Mountaineers are a defense-first team. Almost everything for West Virginia starts on the defensive end under first-year head coach Darian DeVries.

What might be harder to see, however, is just how good the Mountaineers have been on that end this season. Look no further than the team’s most recent game against Mercyhurst. With points hard to come by, WVU’s defense held the Lakers under 30% shooting from the floor and three-point range.

“Every single night we talk about needing to play a certain way,” DeVries said after the game. “We guarded fine, we played tough enough on the defensive end, we just didn’t get a lot going offensively. You’re going to have nights like that and so it was good to see our defense carry us a little bit.”

WVU’s defense ranks top four in the Big 12 in scoring (63.8 points per game), field goal percentage (37.3%), three-point percentage (28.7%) and blocks (66). As good as those numbers are, the advanced statistics like the Mountaineers’ defense even more.

Erik Haslam, who runs HaslamMetrics.com has WVU with the 10th-best defensive efficiency in the nation. Haslam bases his statistics on predicted performance against a hypothetical “average opponent”, i.e. an opponent that would be average in every category.

His defensive efficiency score for WVU is 91.82 points per 100 trips upcourt, 10th best in the country.

“​​West Virginia will suffocate most opponents with its stifling defense,” Haslam’s analysis of the Mountaineers reads. “West Virginia will do a number on many an opponent’s shooting percentage, as the team ranks in the top 25 in three of our four major defensive field goal categories.” 

Haslam has WVU’s defense as 16th in the country with a 38.35% opponent shooting percentage. While his model doesn’t love the Mountaineers’ three-point defense, it has them seventh in the county in mid-range defense (31.72%) and 10th in near-proximity — dunks, lay-ups and tip-ins (48.47%).

The model does not like WVU’s offense, ranked 129th in offensive efficiency, due to what it describes as an over-reliance on shooting threes and not getting to the free throw line often enough.

Even so, Haslam’s model ranks the Mountaineers as the No. 47 team in the country currently and is very bullish on their tournament seeding, slotting them in as a six seed in the NCAA Tournament.

WVU didn’t play the toughest non-conference schedule and things will really ramp up now that the Mountaineers are entering conference play. But if the team continues to defend like it has been, good things will follow.

For a related story, WVU basketball is still looking for its first win inside Allen Fieldhouse.