MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — Minutes after Terrence Shannon Jr. put the cap on his 23-point night with two more free throws, some hard truths had begun to settle in with the West Virginia men’s basketball team.
Much of it, Bob Huggins said he spent the better part of three days reminding his players with the hope of seeing a more focused performance against Texas Tech.
“They were more aggressive,” Huggins said. “They were in a situation where if you lose this one, now you’ve got to go to Kansas, and all of a sudden you’re kind of looking up at everybody. I can’t seem to get that through to our guys.”
WVU guard Taz Sherman called Wednesday’s 89-81 loss to the Red Raiders a learning experience.
The same kind of learning experience the 12th-ranked Mountaineers (16-4, 4-3 Big 12) said they had after losing on the road against Kansas State two weeks ago.
It is a lesson for a young team dealing with success for the first time that has yet to be completed, yet WVU forward Derek Culver said there was more to the Mountaineers’ performance than simply playing poorly on the road.
“They were just hungry,” Culver said. “They did whatever they wanted to do. Some points of the game, we laid down. I just call it how I see it. As a whole today, this was not one of our better performances.”
Texas Tech made 11 3-pointers and Shannon, along with teammates Davide Moretti and Jahmi’us Ramsey all scored more than 20 points.
How rare is that against WVU? The last time three players scored at least 20 in the same game against the Mountaineers was Wake Forest in the 2005 NCAA tournament.
“I can say right now that’s not going to happen to us again,” Sherman said. “This is definitely a learning experience. You don’t always want to have a learning experience when you lose, but all three of them played a really good game.”
Texas Tech’s trio was the answer anytime the Mountaineers made a run to get back into the game.
WVU got as close as two points of Texas Tech in the opening minutes of the second half.
Two minutes later, the Red Raiders were up by 10.
“They made a lot of tough shots to stop our runs and I felt like we got a little complacent,” Sherman said. “We got lackadaisical on defense at times and we weren’t running offense at times. That lead would go from four to 10 real quick.”
It was far from the response Huggins was looking for from a team that has hopes of contending for the Big 12 title.
“We didn’t respond the way I would have liked our guys to respond to the game,” Huggins said. “We should have responded a whole lot better. They beat us to every loose ball. They got every 50-50 ball. The kicked our butts on the glass and that should never ever happen with those guys that we have.”
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