MORGANTOWN -
The last two times West Virginia was able to put together
victories, Notre Dame was the next team on the schedule.
Both times, any sort of momentum or confidence the
Mountaineers had built up in the previous outing was dashed as WVU fell back to
the ground with a loud thud.
After scoring just 16 points in the first half of the loss
earlier this month, Bob Huggins' team came out and matched that poor effort in
the final 20 minutes on Wednesday.
Notre Dame shot 61 percent against the Mountaineers, the
best a team has done against West Virginia since Huggins took over. It wasn't
as though the Irish just made every shot they took despite tough defense. There
was no defense.
Time after time, shooters were left open on the perimeter
and if by some off chance they were guarded well enough to deny a shot, they
found Jack Cooley in the middle to put in two of his 13 points.
West Virginia shot just 31 percent with one made 3-pointer.
Now 28 games into the season, there is still no identity to
the team. Huggins goes through lineups like a guess-and-check problem.
Last week, freshman forward Tommie McCune didn't make the
trip to play at Pittsburgh and Keaton Miles started, but on Wednesday, McCune
got in the game and both Miles and Aaron Brown never made it to the court.
"My guys at Cincinnati used to say all the time, ‘Coach, you
ain't the Wizard, man. You can't give that guy a heart, man,'" Huggins said in
his radio show with the Mountaineer Sports Network, referencing the story of
the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.
That isn't to say he doesn't try to bring out the heart in
his men. It took Huggins nearly 30 minutes to get to his radio show, a clear
sign of quite a message in the locker room.
But all the messages, all the pleading, haven't paid off.
There are no real signs of improvement from the Mountaineers and in many areas
there are discouraging indications of the team taking steps backward.
Last year's WVU basketball team was full of players who
would never be faulted for lacking heart. Maybe they weren't the most talented
athletes, but they certainly tried as hard as they could and put in extra hours
to correct any problems they had.
Without being around the current crop every minute of their
lives to have any firsthand proof, you have to take Huggins' word for it that
those extra hours are being spent on something other than improving on the
court this season.
This was a team that was supposed to bring a different look
offensively than what Huggins put on the court in previous seasons.
It would have been naïve to believe everything the players
and coaches said about the high-paced transition attack that would get up and
down the court at a rate the personnel recently was incapable of achieving.
What we have seen this season is completely unlike what we were told the plan
was, though.
There have been flashes, sure, but nothing to build on.
It has to be eating away at Kevin Jones. His outstanding
season is getting wasted, and after being the shoe-in for conference player of
the year, doubt arises due to the fact that he is having this sort of year for
a team that is falling apart.
Jones was only able to put up 15 points and eight rebounds
in this game. He will be the first to tell you that he'll take those stats if
the team is winning. When it isn't, though, he'll tell you he isn't sleeping.
"Sad as it is to say, we just kind of laid it down," said
Huggins. "K.J. was in the huddle saying, ‘Come on, come on, come on, we've got
to play, we've got to play ‘til the end.'"
And if it weren't for Huggins taking Jones out of the game
with a little over a minute remaining, he would have. The senior leader, the
most consistent player, the most emotionally driven Mountaineer, would have
played – or better yet, fought – until the end of the game.
Jones knows no other way. Unfortunately for him, the same
cannot be said for the rest of the roster he shares a place on.
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