Mountaineers' backcourt should look the same in 2009

MORGANTOWN - The starting backcourt for West Virginia's men'sbasketball team won't look too different next season.

Joe Mazzulla will be the point guard and Alex Ruoff will be theshooting guard barring a preseason injury or a surprise surge fromelsewhere on the roster that would disrupt those plans.

Yet even that which is familiar will look a little foreign.

Take the offseason plans for Ruoff, he of the 173 career 3-pointbaskets.

"Ball-handling is going to be my main focus," the 6-foot-6 SpringHill, Fla., native said. "I need to be able to create my own shot.That's one thing I don't do very well.

"I did it well in high school, but I haven't done it at thecollege level, so I'm going to concentrate on creating off thedribble and creating my own shot."

Mazzulla is quite the opposite. He was perhaps WVU's most skilledand most capable player at driving to the basket and scoring,particularly late in the season when his confidence took form. Yetthe more that happened, the more he was provided with space anddares to try a jump shot.

He rarely took the bait.

"Everyone in the gym knew my role was not to shoot and it becamea mental thing for me," the 6-2 southpaw from Johnston, R.I., said."I bought into the fact that I don't need to be shooting out there.I needed to be creating, penetrating and dishing it off. When youallow yourself to think that you shouldn't shoot the ball, itdefinitely has an affect on the way you play."

Now, when Mazzulla plays in the team's open gym games, he rarelydrives to the basket and instead opts for pull-up and 3-pointjumpers.

"I don't miss," he said. "I don't know what it is, but I don'tmiss. Every once in a while, I have an off day and I'll miss a few,but generally I make everything."

Ruoff is the same, but different. In the same open gym games hetries to score moving to the basket and is typically as successfulas is Mazzulla. Ruoff started this late in the season and showed offa little in the NCAA Tournament when Arizona, Duke and especiallyXavier paid for paying too much attention to scouting reports.

"I had to try something else," Ruoff said of making offensiveadjustments. "I did it a lot in high school, but I got away from ithere with (former Coach John) Beilein and being in such a shootingoffense. I didn't look to penetrate much and molded my game to beingjust a shooter. I want to get back to where I was before."

Ruoff seems a likely candidate to make 81 threes next season andset the school's career record. Mazzulla is not the same player anddoesn't have the same potential. Yet they're working toward changingthose perceptions by adding a new element to their games and a newdimension to the offense.

"We'd be dangerous," Mazzulla said. "Don't get me wrong. I shot50 percent from three this year - I was 9-for-18 (actually 9-for-20and 45 percent). But honestly, if I can get a consistent jump shotso people have to defend it, that's going to open up lanes not onlyfor me to score, but for me to create as well.

"Alex, if he can develop a one-dribble pull-up jumper and keepgetting to the rim, that creates a bunch of matchup problems. We'dcompletely change the way teams guard us."

Contact sportswriter Mike Casazza at mikec@dailymail.com or 319-1142.