Josh Eilert details how WVU will be different offensively in rematch vs. UCF

The West Virginia Mountaineers men’s basketball program will be in action Tuesday night at home as they try to avenge an earlier loss from this season against UCF. In West Virginia’s previous matchup against UCF in January, they found themselves getting dominated down low early, which resulted in a 72-59 road loss. But this time around, head coach Josh Eilert anticipates things going differently for his Mountaineers.

Ahead of their Tuesday night Big 12 showdown, the West Virginia head coach revealed how his team will approach things differently while also highlighting one glaring difference from their previous matchup to Tuesday night’s showdown.

“Well, Jesse (Edwards) didn’t play in the first game,” said Eilert. “So we’ll be playing with our full roster and playing at home, so that certainly should help. And it should help from the rebounding perspective [and] it should help from the physicality perspective, which they play.”

Edwards, who has been one of West Virginia’s top players this season, has missed nine games this year, playing in only 16 of 25 possible contests. The Mountaineers have been spotty at best with their player rotation, with several players absent at various parts of the season, including the team’s leading scorer, RaeQuan Battle. But now West Virginia has their full roster at their disposal, which is why Eilert is confident things will be different this time around.

It’s not just having the full roster at his disposal that has Eilert’s confidence riding high. He also believes that his team has learned from their mistakes from the last matchup and knows how to attack the UCF defense properly.

“I mean, more than anything, you look back to all our sets and execution, that might have been the worst executed offensive production we ever had; the pressure bothered us,” he said. “Their pressure bothered us (and) sped us up. So we need to clean up what we clean up. And it can’t be us against us; it’s gotta be us against them.

“Sometimes, that game, I felt like we were disjointed in a lot of ways and we were on the same page. And that was a credit to how they were playing us defensively. So, our mindsets gotta be different going into this game and understand that we’re not gonna drive it into those [guys]… we need to drive a kick, rather than drive trying to go up through these guys.”

West Virginia and UCF are scheduled to do battle on Tuesday, February 20, at WVU Coliseum. That game is scheduled for a 6 p.m. CT tip-off time and can be viewed on ESPNU or by using the ESPN app. West Virginia enters Tuesday’s contest as 2.5-point underdogs at home.