One can find out a lot about a team by the way it handles difficult situations at important points in the season.
For the West Virginia State and Charleston men's basketball teams, this week is one of those times. Hit hard with injuries to a number of key players, both teams are discovering a lot about how tough they are and how they can come together.
"You learn a lot about your team right now. To me, your toughness and togetherness has to be taken to another level," Charleston coach Dwaine Osborne said. "We have to work smart and not do things that will put us in bad situations. But hopefully we can figure it out."
Both teams find themselves at crucial spots in their seasons. Charleston wants to climb the Mountain East Conference standings to improve its seeding for the upcoming MEC tournament. West Virginia State needs to finish strong for enough wins to earn a bid.
Both will have their hands full on Thursday with tough home matchups. WVSU will take on No. 2 Fairmont State while Charleston squares off against Shepherd.
Both games are expected to tip off at 7:30 p.m. after the conclusion of the women's games.
"We've done a good job of staying together through everything," West Virginia State coach Bryan Poore said. "I don't think our guys have ever pointed fingers at each other or anything like that. It's been a tough stretch and people have had their roles changed but we've stayed together through it, and that's been good to see."
The Falcons sit atop the MEC at 17-1 in conference play and 23-1 overall - armed with the nation's No. 2 scoring offense and a defense that forces more turnovers than any team in the conference.
Pair that type of firepower with a West Virginia State team that averages the most turnovers in the Mountain East, and Poore knows his Yellow Jackets (6-18, 3-15 MEC) will have their hands full if they don't come out ready to play.
"They are relentless defensively with their pressure and they speed you up and get you out of what you want to do," Poore said. "I think they're the best team in the league and we have to try to keep our poise and not let them get us away from our game. We can't let them force us to do things that are outside of what we can do well."
The Yellow Jackets will likely continue to be without three starters as Jayson Hankins is set to undergo surgery later in the week and is out for the season, while Brent Bauer and Cody Morris are slowly going through the process of returning to full strength. That puts a lot of pressure on players like freshman point guard Ernest Jenkins.
Jenkins leads all MEC freshmen in scoring (17.3 points per game) and just had a streak of 20 consecutive games of scoring at least 10 points snapped over the weekend.
Charleston (14-10, 8-10) will look to avenge an earlier loss to Shepherd. The Golden Eagles have been playing well as of late, winning four of their last five games.
Osborne said the tough thing about slowing down a team like Shepherd is the fact that it is a team with several upperclassmen who have played together for a few seasons. That added chemistry has helped the Rams (15-9, 12-6) continue to improve and climb up to No. 4 in the current MEC rankings.
"They're really tough and they play extremely hard," Osborne said. "What they have that you won't find on the stat sheet is their continuity. They've gone through growing pains in the past and have grown together and gotten better from it.
"We're going to have to come out and play better than we did the first time we played them. We can't let them get off to a great start again."
Contact Michael Carvelli at 304-348-4810 or michael.carvelli@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @carvelli3.