How Treadmills Helped West Virginia Basketball Build Their Terrorizing Press Defense

West Virginia basketball is known for suffocating defense.

In recent years, the Mountaineers have utilized an aggressive press defense that sees their players guard every inch of the court. The approach has been wildly effective, as West Virginia has rode their staunch defense to back-to-back Sweet Sixteen appearances, but it’s also exhausting.

In a recent piece for The Player’s Tribune, former West Virginia guard Jevon Carter, now a rookie with the Memphis Grizzlies, revealed how the Mountaineers built the extraordinary endurance needed to play their “Press Virginia” defense.

Since Bob Huggins first became head basketball coach at WVU in 2007, he’s had a treadmill on the sideline of every practice. Over the years, the number of treadmills has increased. When a player makes a mistake in practice, he immediately gets sent to one of the treadmills. We’ll let Carter take it from here:

Do you know how fast 18 mph is? That’s a straight-up sprint. We’re talking about a pace that, if sustained, would result in roughly a 3:20 mile. How did Huggins decide on that pace? It’s apparently the fastest possible setting the team’s treadmills have. And when you’re sprinting that fast, 45 seconds is an eternity. One particularly brutal practice saw Carter perform 10 45-second treadmill sprints.

The treadmill punishment was initially born because Huggins was tired of watching some guys dog it during traditional sprints.

“I used to make ‘em run. You send ‘em over there with your trainers, then they don’t touch the line, they have to run again, then they’re (whining) and moaning to the trainer. Then you’ve gotta go over there and make ’em run, or they don’t make their times, so they have to keep running. I found out I ended up spending more time with the guys who weren’t going to play than the guys who were going to play. So the treadmill deal is really pretty easy—if you stop running, it throws you against the wall,” Huggins told The Chris Vernon Show in June. “You gotta run. You can’t stop in the middle and take a break on the treadmill.”

For Carter, who twice won the National Association of Basketball Coaches Defensive Player of the Year award at WVU, every treadmill sprint meant something. He quickly learned to embrace the pain, because he knew it had a purpose.

“Every time I stepped on that treadmill, I told myself, Don’t fear it. During those 45-second sprints, I was always thinking of the future. Every 45 seconds mattered. Every 45 seconds made me a better player. All those mistakes in practice, and all of that conditioning, is how we won a lot of games last year. It’s how we came back from 18 down against Missouri. It’s how we got to the Sweet 16,” Carter writes.

The next time you see West Virginia outlast and out-hustle another opponent, now you’ll know why.

Photo Credit: John Weast/Getty Images

READ MORE:

• How The N.C. Courage Became The Fittest Women’s Soccer Team on Earth
• 7 Treadmill Workouts That Won’t Waste Your Time
• Use This Treadmill Trick to Build Legitimate Strength and Speed