Huggins has the post players he needed last year
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MORGANTOWN -- To Bob Huggins, having a premier big man is like having an unlimited card.
He believes in a basketball team that intimidates, and in basketball, unless your name is Jordan, Curry or West, it's hard to intimidate simply on your skills.
You know that Huggins is always in search of an intimidating big man. Think of his men in the middle over the years in Kevin Jones, Kevin Noreen, Sagaba Konate, Devin Williams, Elijah Macon, Derek Culver and Oscar Tschiebwe.
Last year he went to war without one and learned it was not for him. To Bob Huggins, bigger is better and he went out this year and brought in a pair of big men who give him exactly what he wants and needs.
Jimmy Bell Jr. and Mo Wague are being overshadowed publicity wise by the guards and forwards Huggins has turned to on the offensive side -- Emmitt Matthews Jr., Tre Mitchell, Erik Stevenson and Joe Toussaint -- but they are in control of keeping up the intimidating image of WVU basketball.
Bell does it through size and physicality, Wague through size and athletic size, athleticism and speed.
Put them together and they more than double the contribution of either one of them alone.
Bell's factor of intimidation has been a 6-10, 285-pound frame, down 75 or so pounds from its highest point. To counter him an opponent needs to come at the game with size, strength and power.
Wague is the exact opposite as he offers the ability to leap out of the gym, the speed to beat the swiftest of guards down the floor, the timing to block anyone's shot and a desire to play the game not only above the rim but scrambling on the floor.
It takes a totally different style of player to match up with him.
Now it's true their individual statistics do not overwhelm anyone, but put them together and you have a monster in the middle.
First of all, with the flurry of highlight reel plays from the four featured players, the shots are being eaten up.
But, would you believe that Wague has made 77.8% of his field goals? That's better than three of every four.
Granted they are up close to the basket -- often looking down upon the basket -- but remember all the soliloquies from Huggins about how he could not understand how a team could miss so many one-foot shots.
"He is by far our best finisher around the rim," Huggins says.
When you put Bell and Wague together you get a single position giving you 28 minutes a game, making 70.4% of its shots from the field, grabbing off 9.3 rebounds a game and scoring 11.8.
That is very similar to the 9.4 and 14.3 Culver put up a couple of years back.
But here's the thing. Bell is improving every day offensively and Wague is learning his role more and more each day, enough that neither can be ignored to double up on any of the other shooters.
As both offer up different styles of skills, so, too, do their backgrounds differ.
Bell grew up in a crime ridden Saginaw, Michigan, and Wague in Bamako, Mali.
Early on, neither was looked upon as basketball players, Bell using his physical size to be an offensive lineman and Wague was a soccer player with a penchant for winning every battle for a header.
Wague came to the United States after never touching a basketball until five years ago with the intent of working on his basketball game.
He wound up in the Bronx, New York, and helped Frederick Douglass Academy win the 2019 New York City public school championship, then refined his game at prep school the following year.
He spent a season at Harcum junior college in Bryn Mawr, Pa., where he led all junior college players with 417 rebounds and was third in blocked shots.
Former Huggins assistant Erik Martin, out on a recruiting trip, stumbled upon him and called Huggins.
"He came back and said, 'Huggs, you've got to go see him,'" Huggins said. "I said, 'How good is he?' He said he didn't know, but I had to go see him."
Huggins was smitten from the start and Wague keeps showing more and more.
"I was amazed with his agility initially," Huggins said. "Then you see he can catch the ball. A lot of guys like that can't catch. And then you see how he finishes around the goal.
"He's got to get stronger, but that will come. I think his potential is great. It's not good, it's great. He's just got to continue to work at things."
"Every year was a step forward," Wague said. "From high school to prep school to JUCO to here, every year I kept going up a little. I just kept working."
As for Bell, he could have played college football. He even says some of the football players are still jokingly "recruiting" him but he wound up coming out of high school and playing at St. Louis University for two years, then going to Moberly, Missouri, JC.
"I miss football," Bell admits, but once you play against Purdue's 7-foot-4, 290-pound center Zach Edey as he did, you have your fill of contact for a lifetime.
Bell has worked hard on his hands and his inside shooting in an attempt to become a more complete player.
"There's been times we've seen him dominate an entire practice and not miss anything," Tre Mitchell said earlier this season. "Nobody can do anything about it because at the end of the day, when he gets in that mode, there's not many people who can stop him."