West Virginia coach Bob Huggins was in a joking mood following Wednesday’s 58-49 loss to No. 3 Kansas, but it was more to mask his frustration with his team that has now lost two straight and three of its last five.
“I’m in one of those moods — I’m trying to amuse myself so that I don’t get pissed off,” Huggins said after the game.
And the coach has a right to be pissed. Leading by as many as nine points with 13 minutes left in the second half, the lead slowly dwindled for the Mountaineers before the floor eventually completely fell out. The last six minutes was about as brutal an offensive stretch as a team could have. Gabe Osabuohien made a lay-up and Jermaine Haley knocked down a free throw.
Those were the last points West Virginia scored on the night as KU rattled off an 18-3 run down the stretch.
Turnovers, bad passes, missed shots and ugly offensive sets doomed the Mountaineers, and while no one played well in the end, sophomore point guard Jordan McCabe knew who to blame.
“Wins fall on the team and losses fall on the point guard,” said McCabe, who finished with 10 points in 26 minutes. “Myself, [Miles McBride] and [Brandon Knapper], we all take full responsibility for not taking care of the ball. When you give them more possessions than you get, that’s how they win games.”
The trio of McCabe, McBride and Knapper finished with eight turnovers and no assists, and add in Haley, that moves to 12 turnovers and one assist. With two sophomores and a freshman in that group, there is a major lack of inexperience, and despite Huggins’ playful postgame, he kept going back to inexperience as a reason his young point guards haven’t quite figured it out just yet.
“Jordan played a little bit at the end of last year,” Huggins said. “Knapp played a little bit at the end. Knapp isn’t really a point. Knapp’s more of a scoring kind of guy. McBride really isn’t a point guard. We’re inexperienced.”
As the regular season winds down — and a date with No. 1 Baylor set for Saturday — the youthful energy that boosted the Mountaineers to a top-15 ranking with projections for a top seed in the NCAA tournament is beginning to turn into a headache for Huggins. Getting the young guys to quit making the same mistakes in critical situations is what WVU needs to do now to take the next step.
Problem is, Huggins, a man with 878 wins in his career, is perplexed with just how to do it.
“The frustrating thing is we continue to do the same thing over and over and again, and it’s not the right thing,” he said. “You don’t catch it in the post, put your head down and dribble it. You don’t do that. You’re going to lose it, and we do. How many balls did we throw away? We throw hook passes in the post with all those hands and arms and everything else.
“That’s a lack of understanding. The thing is, I hope we learn from it. Some guys do and some guys don’t. But … I don’t know.”
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