5’10” 168 lbs Honor Huff has found a way to amass 15 rebounds in his last 2 games against Cincinnati and Kansas. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel to tell you that it should be much harder to rebound against Houston. 

West Virginia will have Harlan Obioha anchoring the paint since he can’t shoot from the perimeter. That will allow JoJo Tugler to stay there as well and fight for the boards himself. Chris Cenac will likely draw the Brenen Lorient matchup, but I expect him to struggle anyway. Between Uzan, Sharp, and Flemings not only are the Houston guards more active on the boards but the crutch of the Kelvin Sampson system is to always find a body boxing out. Not to mention Sharp stands at 6’3” while the other two are 6’4” and all are much more physical than Huff.

Huff also does not really get any contested rebounds. All of his rebounds in the past two games came from crazy bounces on threes or the WVU team boxing out the bigs to leave a wide open lane for Huff. Houston will box out at a much higher rate to not allow that to happen. This is also a matchup between the 2 slowest teams in the Big 12, who both rank in the bottom 50 nationally. Should be fewer possessions and more of an inside grind from Houston against the WVU defense. I’ll tip cap if he gets 3 here.

An assortment of crazy squares up for Will Richard today. He has 2 points in his last 4 games on a combined 1-6 shooting and 0-3 from three. Yet he has 0.5 threes, 3.5 points, and 6.5 PRA all available to take today. Not to mention the 1.5 3PT attempts and 2.5 FG attempts green goblin also on the board. Why might that be? 

Well these two teams met back in late November this season in a game where Steph had 38 and shot 17 threes. Jrue Holiday wasn’t active in that one to hound Curry, but will be tonight even with a slight potential minutes restriction. Deni Avdija and Jerami Grant will not be playing tonight, which will be a hit for the Blazers defensive depth on the wing.

In my opinion this sets up for Draymond to have the ball in his hands to distribute to Steph’s supporting cast a lot in this one (like Draymond assists as well). Limiting Curry is much easier said than done of course, but the Blazers team that already was torched by Steph and is now without Deni, Grant, and Murray will likely make any other Warriors shooters be the ones to beat them.

Obviously Will Richard will begin his night with the second unit that could be ran by either Draymond or Jimmy Butler, but Steve Kerr isn’t afraid to give certain bench guys minutes if the matchup calls for it. This seems like a game where wing shooters should have their opprtunity to take shots. And I’m in.