MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — For generations of West Virginians born after Jerry West graduated from the school in 1960, it has been the same question we have asked again and again.
It has been asked in many forms, but however it was asked, it came down to why is there a lack of respect for West Virginia University athletics?
Go on the internet message boards and scroll back through years of content and you will find topic after topic on how either ESPN or the Associated Press poll voters or the NCAA selection committee hates or doesn’t have enough respect for the Mountaineers.
For those who actually took a moment to wonder why there may be some grand conspiracy against West Virginia, the 12th-ranked Mountaineers couldn’t have served up a better answer Saturday in an 84-68 loss against Kansas State, at Bramlage Coliseum.
Given the opportunity to break into the nation’s top 10 … Given the opportunity to announce itself as one of the best teams in the Big 12 and the country … Given the opportunity to solidify its projections as a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament (according to ESPN, which you probably feel still hates WVU), the Mountaineers instead fell flat on their face.
Big time. Against a team that had yet to win a Big 12 game this season.
“We weren’t ready,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said on his postgame radio interview. “It’s so much a mental game. (Kansas State) was desperate. We told them that. All the talk from the media around here was they were 0-4 in the league. Our guys weren’t desperate. They came in and just took it to us.”
Pick a sport and you’ll find one example after another of the Mountaineers getting to the point of pounding their chest with pride only to get pounded in the back of the head.
13-9 probably rings a bell. Texas A&M winning with a walk-off grand slam probably does, too.
Does this loss to Kansas State really compare to those? Of course it doesn’t.
Still hurts this team to the point where it will have to literally play from behind in the conference standings pretty much the rest of the season.
“You can’t explain to them that you can’t get this back. It’s gone,” Huggins said. “It was a great opportunity. Gone.”
The fundamental difference between Baylor, Kansas and West Virginia right now is not found in recruiting rankings.
It’s found in games just like this. Kansas does not lose this game. Ever.
Sure the Jayhawks have fallen at K-State before, but not to a K-State team that was previously winless in conference play.
Struggle? Sure. Have a bad day at the office? Likely. Maybe have a few calls go against them? Maybe, but Kansas would have found a way to win this game.
Baylor trailed at Oklahoma State on Saturday — also winless in the Big 12 — by 12 points with 14 minutes remaining and came back and won.
West Virginia nearly erased a 24-point deficit with 14:39 remaining, but when the Mountaineers got the game as close as six points, they just started chucking up 3-pointers like it was some pick-up game at Marilla Park that meant absolutely nothing.
For the record, WVU is the worst 3-point shooting team in the Big 12, but WVU players seemed to have forgotten that over the final 7:50, once WVU had cut the Wildcats’ lead to 60-54.
Instead of sucking it up, WVU simply showed the rest of the country that it can’t be trusted.
Instead of staying aggressive, the Mountaineers started committing fouls 93 feet away from the basket.
Instead of backing up all the hype of having one of the nation’s top defenses, they allow some kid named DaJuan Gordon to have the game of his life.
DaJuan-friggin-Gordon, who finished with 15 points on 6 of 7 shooting. The freshman’s previous career high was 13 against the powerhouse known as Alabama State.
And instead of WVU saying, “This team would be different,” the Mountaineers simply laid an egg at a time it couldn’t afford to do it.
Just like all those people that have a grudge against WVU at ESPN or the voters who go out of their way to not hand out enough respect to the Mountaineers expected them to.
So now the question becomes: What next?
Either WVU can regroup or simply drift off quietly into the night.
A year ago, that 15-21 season in 2018-19 pretty much began by blowing a 21-point lead and losing to Kansas State at Bramlage Coliseum.
Huggins said he reminded his players exactly of that moment.
“This is where it went south a year ago,” Huggins said. “What am I going to do? Not tell them?”
Escaping that fate again may take more work than most would think. This was more than just a bad day at the office.
And for the Mountaineers to make believers out of the rest of the country, well, it’s very hard to say that’s even possible right now.
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