WVU Basketball is Officially Off the Rails

What went wrong, and where does it go from here

Credit: Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register

Watching the Iowa State game on Saturday, I was taken back to memories from my youth when I would be sick from school. No, I don't mean the nausea (though there was plenty of that last night too). I mean the Price is Right - specifically, the Cliff Hanger game. There may be no better analogy for watching WVU basketball over the last few weeks: the slow climb to the edge of the cliff, and the accompanying feeling of helplessness to stop the inevitable fall.

Mountaineer fans are left scratching their heads. After a massive beating to start the season, the team rebounded in true Huggins fashion and rolled off 15 straight wins, climbing to number two in the polls and a projected top seed in the NCAA tournament. Halfway through the Texas Tech game, with another double-digit lead in hand, talk started to turn to Villanova's upcoming game against Butler and the potential of being ranked number one in the country. We all know where the story goes from there.

This is my attempt to sort through what has happened, what hasn't happened, and what needs to happen for this to still be a successful season.

The Good

Credit: Rachel Mummey-
USA TODAY Sports

As hard as it is to believe, there are some good things we've seen over the last six games. The obvious one is the 35-point bludgeoning of Texas. Less obviously, and more painfully, the blown leads: it takes a really good team to build 12, 16, and 17 point leads against Texas Tech, Kansas, and Kentucky, respectively, in the first place. There's no denying that the ceiling is high.

From a player standpoint, Beetle Bolden has been a bright spot over this stretch. Chase Harler has put
in some good minutes, and Logan Routt has shown major improvement. We got to see some good moments from D'Angelo Hunter over that stretch, when he had been otherwise silent the rest of the season. Even Esa Ahmad (who has been the target of blame for a lot of fans) had 17 points on 70% shooting and eight rebounds against Iowa State, easily his best offensive performance since coming back. That's a lot of experience gained in big games for our "depth" players.

Individually, at some point, all of our pieces have proven their worth during the season. The issue is they have not shown it collectively, nor consistently. 

The Bad

Oh, the bad...where to begin?

There are a lot of problems with this team. Not being able to close out games seems like a major one, but if you listen to Huggins, that's more a result of other problems than it is its own problem. 

The Iowa State game seems to confirm that, because it put to rest a lot of the excuses that were being made prior to it. The blown leads against Texas Tech and Kansas were a product of big egos and not being able to handle the moment. The loss at TCU was a result of a two day turn-around with a road trip. Kentucky? Well they are full of five star recruits, and they just out-talented our three star guys in the second half.

But Iowa State? It was a Wednesday game, not a quick turn-around. Iowa State is a bad team, possibly the worst in the conference. They were missing their best all-around player, and their roster is less talented than the Mountaineers. They scored 45 points against Tennessee on Saturday in HiltonJohn Beilein's first season.

Credit: Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register

Coliseum. And they absolutely, unabashedly tore apart West Virginia from start to finish, putting up the most points any WVU team has given up since

There is no chemistry on either side of the ball. No offense is being run, and no one is getting to their spot on defense. The scoring spurts that do come are all individual efforts - mainly Carter, Konate, or Bolden making plays to keep the rest of the team afloat.

The collection of forwards - West, Harris, Ahmad, Bender, and Allen - have been a major disappointment over this six game stretch. Each has shown flashes of brilliance at times this season, but more often than not they're seen chucking bad shots and not getting back on defense. 

And Daxter Miles has disappeared.

The assumption keeps being that one of these losses will be a wake-up call, but it's just the same nightmare over and over.

The Ugly

The post-game by Bob Huggins after the Iowa State game contained things I hadn't heard him say since the 2012-2014 stretch of bad seasons. The complete feeling of defeat, the references to guys needing to leave the program; it was reminiscent of the mass exodus when McCune, Williamson, Forsythe, Miles, Gerun, Brown, Murray, Hinds, Henderson, and Harris all transferred over a three year period. Most of those guys were good players - Harris, Henderson, Hinds, Miles, and Brown actually sound like one heck of a starting lineup - but they weren't the players that Huggins needs. They weren't Da'Sean Butler, they weren't Nathan Adrian, and they weren't Jevon Carter.

Credit: USA TODAY Sports

At 16-6 and 5-4 in the toughest conference in basketball, I don't think we're at that point yet. I feel like, in our Price is Right Cliff Hanger game, we're a dollar away from the peak with one guess to go. A loss on Saturday, though, and in seven games this team will have gone from being talked about as a one-seed to being talked about as potentially missing the tournament altogether in one of the biggest collapses in college basketball history.

The Future

Our fans owe it to our players to show up on Saturday, but the players owe it to the fans to do the same...not just Saturday, but throughout the rest of the season. 

The WVU fan base is one of the most passionate in the country, and they'll be there every step of the way if they feel the players are giving it their all. But they also share the frustration of Huggins, and many see the same lack of caring and emotion that he sees. 

Let's get back to playing for each other and playing for the state again. Like Huggins said in his post game, if your man beats you on defense, you should be mad. You should take it personally. 

Let's get back to West Virginia basketball, starting Saturday, and keep it from going over that cliff.

And, most importantly: Let's Go Mountaineers.