MORGANTOWN — If body language is to tell us anything, then West Virginia was a beaten dog Saturday at the hands of ninth-ranked Kansas.
Heads were hung. Shoulders were drooped and faces were filled with puzzled looks during a second half that was completely dominated by the Jayhawks in their 85-59 victory inside Allen Fieldhouse.
“It’s definitely a wake-up call,” WVU forward Jalen Bridges said. “I felt like people were too up on themselves. As a team, we got a little too satisfied and you can’t ever do that.”
In truth we could end this column right here, because there is no better explanation than what Bridges said in what happened to the Mountaineers (13-3, 2-2 Big 12) in what simply will be chalked up as yet another disappointing trip to Kansas.
In the interest of job security, though, we’ll keep going and point out that WVU desperately needed Taz Sherman to show up for this game.
He didn’t.
The Big 12’s second leading scorer had a nightmarish day, finishing 1 of 9 from the field and that one basket didn’t come until late in the second half when the Mountaineers were already faced with an insurmountable deficit.
“Taz hasn’t fully recovered from COVID,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said. “It varies from person to person. He’s been fine in practice, but he’s played a lot of minutes. We were as we have been doing in relying on him to score the ball for us and he struggled. I think he put a little more pressure on himself when that happened.”
Making matters worse, Sherman banged his knee against Kansas center David McCormack early in the second half and could only watch from the sideline as the Jayhawks (14-2, 3-1) made their initial run to secure the game.
More than Sherman’s scoring, the Mountaineers needed a man in the middle, especially defensively.
McCormack is a talented man, one who stands 6-foot-10 and 250 pounds. He’s a former McDonald’s All-American who has struggled offensively this season, but that ended Saturday.
Isaiah Cottrell may one day be that type of player, but he’s not there right now, and every time he was isolated on McCormack, you could just see the confidence and experience spewing out of McCormack, who finished with 19 points and 15 rebounds.
Gabe Osabuohien was a little better, but gave up too much size. Pauly Paulicap and Dimon Carrigan got their first real taste of big-time Big 12 basketball, and they just weren’t ready for it, either.
McCormack is, “big and strong and he’s very athletic,” Huggins said. “We tried to front him and didn’t do a very good job. Obviously we can’t play behind him. We didn’t have a lot of options.”
The Mountaineers ran out of options, because they ran out of their defensive toughness that had carried them to this point of the season.
Or, maybe more to the point Bridges made, WVU found out that the toughness needed to beat teams like UAB, Eastern Kentucky and Connecticut is not the same type of toughness you need against Kansas or even against top-ranked Baylor, who WVU has the unfortunate luck of playing on Tuesday in Morgantown.
“When we’re making shots and getting stops, this team plays with energy,” said Bridges, who finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds. “The second half, we came out flat and they went on a big run and you all saw what happened next.”
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