MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — If a bad situation is supposed to look better after sleeping on it for a night, well, No. 14 West Virginia may not be on board with that theory.
A 91-90 double-overtime loss against No. 12 Oklahoma dropped the Mountaineers (14-6, 7-4 Big 12) from second place in the Big 12 standings to a tie for fourth with Texas, which owns a tiebreaker over WVU at the moment.
“It really burns,” WVU guard Deuce McBride said. “We really wanted that one. They’re the only Big 12 team we haven’t beaten yet. We had a chance and then we had another chance. We just gave it away to them.”
The uncertainty of the conference schedule leaves a major question of just how far up the hill the Mountaineers have to climb.
As the regular season heads into the final two weeks — three if you count the week set aside for make-up games before the league tournament — No. 2 Baylor still has six games to make up. That could be seven if the Bears are unable to host Oklahoma State on Saturday.
If WVU were to lose to No. 13 Texas (13-5, 7-4) on Saturday, the Longhorns would become the second team — along with Oklahoma — above the Mountaineers in the conference standings to own a season sweep of the Mountaineers.
That would likely put WVU in a situation where it would have to win its remaining games just to stay in the conversation of earning a No. 5 seed in the Big 12 tournament.
We don’t know yet if the Mountaineers will even play Baylor in the regular season or how many times.
We don’t know how many games the Big 12 will ask teams to play in that week before the conference tournament. Will it be two? Is three games over a six-day period asking too much?
“That will all be left up to the conference. The basketball coaches won’t have any say in that,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said. “The conference and maybe the presidents and athletic directors may talk about it, but the coaches won’t have anything to do with it.”
As for Saturday’s loss, the silver linings were hard to find, but there were some.
WVU survived the first overtime strictly on second-chance opportunities.
Emmitt Matthews Jr. came up with two baskets in the overtime, one on a tip-in and the other by working his way back to the rim after missing a shot, picking up the loose ball and dunking it for a 77-76 lead.
Jalen Bridges tipped in a 3-point miss by Sean McNeil with 21 seconds left in overtime to send the game to a second overtime.
For Bridges, the freshman from Fairmont secured a career-high 11 rebounds in the loss. He played 48 of 50 minutes, the most of anyone on the team.
“Jalen played better than anybody else we had,” Huggins said. “You certainly can’t point the finger at Jalen.”
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