Quick Hits: Edwards Injury Update, Preparing a Starting 5, and More

West Virginia University head coach Josh Eilert Radford preview quick hits

The West Virginia Mountaineers (4-6) welcome the Radford Highlanders (9-4) Wednesday night, with tip-off set for 7:00 p.m. and streaming on ESPN+.

Opening Statement

Just to recap since Saturday. Sunday, we took off and yesterday we met and took a look at what we can fix on film from the UMass game and took the big takeaways from that. Trying to figure out how we navigate over all of our challenges, knowing an hour before practice 11 o'clock I found out that (center) Jesse (Edwards) would in fact need surgery to correct his wrist. So, once again, another challenge that we got to deal with and face head on, but that's what we're going to do. I've said throughout this whole thing, we're not going to be a victim. We're going to take our challenges head on and we're going to attack them. So here we are with another one that we're going to have to overcome, especially knowing we got two really hard games coming up even before we break for Christmas. So, looking forward to bringing in Daris Nichols, a very, very good friend of mine and probably the closest friend I have in the coaching business coming in town tomorrow and I look forward to seeing him and he's got a really good team. In his third year there at Radford, he's really elevated that program to a high-level team that I think has a very good chance of winning our league. So, we will go again today, and we'll take this challenge head on and look forward to take on a good read for team tomorrow.

Jesse Edward’s injury

I believe the surgery is tomorrow. I'm not sure that the intricacies of the surgery and the names of the bones or anything like that I was a business major, like I said before. So, I try to stick to what I know and more than anything, I just wanted to know how quick he could recover and whether something he'd be back for this year, and it sounds like that will be the case. So, we're looking at probably around a four-week recovery time. So, we'll do everything we can with him and practice to keep him ready to go and engaged and locked in, so he'll be ready to transition right back in when that time comes. I have full faith and Jesse staying on top of everything and being engaged. So, that's nothing I'm concerned with there, but it will be a challenge from the fact that there for longest time we didn't you know have any guard depth now we have some guard depth, but we never had a backup center. So, here we are trying to play without a center. We'll figure it out and we'll take this challenge head on. 

Determining a starting five

We haven't quite made a determination who's going to be my starting five. I have an idea, but I want to make sure everything works correctly today in practice. If there's synergy with that group, I'll stick with them and figure out who's going to give me that spark off the bench because as a coach, you always want to figure out somebody that could change the game coming off the bench. Maybe that guy might be hard 100% worthy of starting but if you want to help sacrifice for the good of the team you put that on the backburner and you say, ‘okay, I’m going to accept my role. I’m going to accept my role and I’m going to take it on, and I excel in that role.’

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