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

Joe Mazzulla will be the point guard and Alex Ruoff will be the shooting guard barring a preseason injury or a surprise surge from elsewhere 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-point baskets.

"Ball-handling is going to be my main focus," the 6-foot-6 Spring Hill, 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 the college level, so I'm going to concentrate on creating off the dribble and creating my own shot."

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

He rarely took the bait.

"Everyone in the gym knew my role was not to shoot and it became a 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 you allow yourself to think that you shouldn't shoot the ball, it definitely has an affect on the way you play."

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

"I don't miss," he said. "I don't know what it is, but I don't miss. 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 he tries to score moving to the basket and is typically as successful as is Mazzulla. Ruoff started this late in the season and showed off a little in the NCAA Tournament when Arizona, Duke and especially Xavier paid for paying too much attention to scouting reports.

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

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

"We'd be dangerous," Mazzulla said. "Don't get me wrong. I shot 50 percent from three this year -- I was 9-for-18 (actually 9-for-20 and 45 percent). But honestly, if I can get a consistent jump shot so people have to defend it, that's going to open up lanes not only for me to score, but for me to create as well.

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

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