MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - After the loss to Pitt, the WVU men’s basketball team talked about the importance of refocusing for the final six games of the season. It wasn’t until Monday, however, that they finally got the chance to get back to work.

““I gave them two days off,” said Coach Huggins. “We’ve had a pretty tough stretch, so I wanted to give them a couple days off. I was going to do that win or lose.”

Perhaps the rest was exactly what the team needed. They had time to clear their heads and begin thinking about what they need to do going forward if they intend to get back in the swing of things in the BIG EAST. And while they were at home celebrating Valentine’s Day however a Division I basketball player does, two of the league’s top five teams suffered losses.

Nothing like improving your position in the conference tournament without lifting a finger.

At the same time, you could argue that getting back on the court to prepare for Providence would be the best way to get over such a heartbreaking loss. No easier way to stop thinking about the past than to be actively adjusting toward the future. There’s no doubt in Huggins’s mind that his players are anxious to turn their attention to the next chance at a win.

“If they didn’t, we’d probably have to check their pulse,” he said. “You lose a game like that, sure you want to go back in. The whole battle is to want to go back in all the time. Whether you won 10 in a row or you gave a game away, you should want to get back in there all the time.”

If you thought the next practice for these Mountaineers would feature start-to-finish free throw shooting; you’re incorrect. West Virginia basketball shoots free throws every practice, so there won’t be an added emphasis on them now just because they’ve struggled from the line in their two consecutive defeats.

“We’ve shot a lot of free throws,” Huggins said of his team’s practices. “We didn’t shoot a bunch of them early on because we were trying to get everything in, but over the break and since then, we’ve had them make at least 50. Some days, when we had enough time, they made 100.”

The way they’ve been shooting them lately, you’d think the task of making 100 would keep the Mountaineers practicing for days at a time. The very thought of it brings to mind images of Truck Bryant and Da’Sean Butler, sleep deprived, lobbing up failed attempts as the rest of us sleep in our beds.

But that’s not the reality. The reality is, this team is capable of making free throws, and you need not look past last year’s statistics to prove it.

“A year ago, we led the BIG EAST in free throw shooting,” said Huggins. “It’s the same guys [this year]. Granted, taking Alex [Ruoff] out changed it a little bit, [but] it shouldn’t have changed it that much.”

The biggest anomaly in the entire equation is Butler’s struggles from the charity stripe. Against St. John’s just over a week ago, he makes all eight of his attempts. To that point, he had missed 21 of his 96 attempts, good for a 78 percent average. Flash-forward to Villanova, he misses on three of 10. Against Pitt, he misses five of 18, but it’s the importance of those misses that made WVU’s leading scorer look like he is having major problems with his free throws.

“After he missed two, I thought he was hanging his head a little bit and Truck had just made a couple, so I wanted to throw the ball to Truck, and then Truck missed one,” said Huggins. “You’re going to miss some once in awhile, you know? I mean, you shouldn’t miss three front ends, but you’re going to miss some once in awhile.”

So who knows, maybe the team will continue to make 100 in each practice leading up to the next game at Providence on Wednesday. What will be interesting to see is how many they make when the lights and the cameras and all the eyes are on them and they really count.

How many of the 100 will they make then?