MORGANTOWN -
Eyeing the finish line, West Virginia has no choice but to
start over.
The Mountaineers wrapped up a 13-18 regular season with
another loss Saturday, pushing the streak to six games without feeling the euphoria
of a victory. Their hope now, with at least one more game guaranteed in the Big
12 tournament, is to forget all about the numbers that have led to this point.
"My mindset is going to be 0-0," freshman guard Terry
Henderson said after WVU fell to Iowa State. "It's 0-0, we've got a clean slate
going into the Big 12 tournament. Probably play one of the low seeds first and
then get somebody like Kansas the second round and go ahead and just take care
of business."
The 0-0 reference is one that clearly has made its rounds in
the Mountaineers' locker room as a number of players mentioned it on Saturday.
It can refer to both the score of a game and the record of wins and losses, but
more than anything, it represents a clean slate.
The slate will be completely wiped clean soon enough, but
for now, the memories of the regular season failures can be put in the past. The
only chance for head coach Bob Huggins' sixth-straight NCAA tournament
appearance at West Virginia is a four-game run in the conference tournament to
win the Big 12 championship title.
"I tried to explain to them before the game, it's never too
late as long as you have the conference tournament," said Huggins. "As long as
you are still standing, you might as well fight."
As bad as the season has been, it is perhaps West Virginia's
most redeeming quality that the team rarely appears to be throwing in the
towel. The finale against Iowa State was a prime example of the sort of
fighting Huggins wants to see from his men so long as they are standing.
Trailing by as many as 27 in the second half, the
Mountaineers strung together a few jabs that caught the Cyclones off guard and
got the home team within four before ultimately falling short. They showed in
those minutes what the potential of this unit could be, but what so often this
season was dormant and unseen.
"We got the tools and the pieces to win, we just didn't put
it together yet," said sophomore guard Jabarie Hinds. "I don't know why, I
really don't know, but I know we have the tools to be a good team, we just
haven't put everything together."
Putting it together can't happen until everything is
completely torn down. Huggins will have quite a project ahead of him to fix
what is his first team to finish below .500 since he coached at Akron in the
1984-85 season.
Before those changes are made in the offseason, though, the
current players want to see something pay off in what remains in Kansas City
this week.
"This gave me so much hope, this comeback," senior Deniz
Kilicli said Saturday. "I think next week we can make a run. You never know. It's
0-0 now, so if we can put all the B.S. behind and do what we do, I think we
will be just fine."
The talk is one thing, the results are a different thing
altogether and WVU has given little reason to believe that a run at the Sprint
Center is possible, much less likely.
These Mountaineers just want to make it clear that despite
all of the setbacks and the poor play, they have not stopped playing.
"Regardless of how the season's gone and looked, none of us
are quitters. I know I'm not one," said Henderson. "[We] just really need to
keep fighting and being a team and that's what I think these guys are. It'll
get better, man. It'll be a whole lot better, but we didn't execute and we
really didn't take care of business this year."
They are still standing, still fighting and on Wednesday,
they'll get in the ring with Texas Tech.
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2013 WorldNow and WVILL. All Rights Reserved.
