This will be some great exposure for WVU, and will help the incoming freshmen get familiar with Huggs style of play prior to the start of next season. It will also help tremendously with team chemistry...

WV Illustrated Wrote:WVU Men's Basketball Team Heading to Italy This Summer
By Scott Grayson for wvillustrated.com
February 11, 2011

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. – The NCAA allows division one basketball programs the opportunity to go overseas and play some games against international competition once every four years. Bob Huggins and his staff intend to take their team to Italy this summer.

WVU Director of Basketball Operations Jerrod Calhoun is working closely with a company that plans these type of trips for college teams. “I think it will be a big deal,” Calhoun said. “We’ve got five kids coming in, five freshmen. We get to practice ten days here in Morgantown before we head to Italy. I know Huggs has been on a number of these things. I, as a player, went over to Italy myself when I played at Cleveland State and I think the bonding that this team will have in the offseason with the new faces and the guys we have returning, it’ll be just terrific.”

Five new players will try to mesh with the returning players. They will also try to adjust to life in college. The timing for a trip like this is perfect for the Mountaineers. These five players will get ten more practices then they would have been allowed to get with the coaching staff and their teammates. They will then spend 13 days on the road in Italy with these players bonding as a unit.

“I think that’s why Huggs decided to do it this summer,” Calhoun said. “Five new faces. I mean the guys coming back, Truck, and Deniz and KJ, some of those guys who have been in the program three or four years. I think it’s going to be their job to lead these guys over there and show them what we do, not only at practice but in a pre-game meal and they will get a real good idea of how we run things.”

WVU will leave for Italy on August 8th and return on the 22nd. The Mountaineers will begin their trip in Sicily before heading to Rome and eventually Venice.

“We’ll work with the guy who puts this trip together,” Calhoun said. “He does this type of thing, that’s his job. We’ll make sure we get to go to the Vatican and we get to go to the Coliseum while we’re in Rome. We’ll sit down as a staff and figure out which of these things we want the kids to experience and make sure we do that.”

The Mountaineers are looking to play four to five games while they are in Italy. Their opponents have not been set yet, but Calhoun says he expects to face some solid competition.

“When we were over there, we played the Italian National Team when I was a player with Cleveland State,” Calhoun said. “So, I think the teams will be really competitive. We’re kind of waiting to see what the lineup is going to be. We want to play good teams. Playing in the Big East, we’re going to have a great non-conference schedule early and coming off that trip we want our guys to be playing some good competition.”

This is a perfect trip and a perfect way to begin the season. Between the ten practices in Morgantown and the 13 days in Italy, the 2011-2012 Mountaineers will have 23 extra days together to bond and get familiar with each other. That extra time together should help the new team be more ready for the season opener then it otherwise would have been.

(02-11-2011 01:28 PM)bitcruncher Wrote:  This will be some great exposure for WVU, and will help the incoming freshmen get familiar with Huggs style of play prior to the start of next season. It will also help tremendously with team chemistry...

UC made a trip to Canada last year and it helped a lot. Would have been better if both our freshman had made it through the clearinghouse prior to the trip.