West Virginia Basketball Breaks Into Top Ten

The West Virginia Mountaineers took advantage of slip-ups by the Miami Hurricanes and North Carolina Tarheels to jump into the top 7. West Virginia, who all but ended their non-conference play with wins over Coppin State and Fordham this week (they still have a late January meeting with Kentucky), now has won 11 straight games.

Bob Huggins crew has been unimpressively impressive in their last few wins, thanks in part to their competition. Huggins has attempted to give his bench players more playing time in these games which should not be competitive but has been forced to used Jevon Carter and Daxter Miles much more than he would have liked. Miles responded to the additional playing time by notching his 1,000 career point against Fordham on Saturday. Dax nailed a three pointer early in the second half of Saturday’s game, making him the 52nd player in school history to score 1,000 points.

Huggins responded to Miles’ career accomplishment with his signature dry wit, saying Miles must have taken the most shots in history to get to 1,000 points.

Jevon Carter and Daxter Miles will open Big 12 conference play at the Oklahoma State Cowboys on Friday. The Mountaineers are one of six Big 12 teams in the AP Top 25 and are the top ranked team in the conference.

1. Villanova
2. Michigan State
3. Arizona State
4. Duke
5. Texas A&M
6. Xavier
7. West Virginia
8. Wichita State
9. Virginia
10. TCU

Full rankings can be found here