Barring a run to a Big 12 Tournament Championship, this coming week will tell the story of the West Virginia basketball team’s hopes for any chance of making a push for the NCAA Tournament.
In most years, 14-12 would have no chance for a possible bid, but given the difficulty of the schedule that the Mountaineers have played ranking inside the top ten nationally and the mere fact that this team hasn’t suffered what could be considered a bad loss you can’t close the book just yet.
Out of those 12 losses, 11 of them have been to quadrant one teams and the only other is of the quadrant two variety showcasing just how challenging things have been. The Mountaineers currently sit at 3-10 in the Big 12 Conference, which is obviously from ideal for obvious reasons.
The latest loss to Kansas was almost a mirror image of several others during this recent stretch of 10 losses in 11 games as West Virginia struggled to put the ball in the basket, couldn’t keep the Jayhawks from scoring in the post and couldn’t overcome their own mistakes.
“We can’t survive that. We’re not good enough to survive that,” head coach Bob Huggins said.
There are five games remaining prior to the start of the league tournament and while it looks bleak Huggins isn’t ready to roll over and die just yet.
“Everybody has got somewhere between 7-10 losses. Virtually everybody but the people that are playing to win the league. Oklahoma is 14-13 and they’re still in the NCAA Tournament according to the prognosticators,” Huggins said. “If they can be in, we sure ought to be in. We’ve got to go take care of business. We’re going to play three games in a week and if we lose two we’re probably done.”
That makes this week starting with the road trip to TCU Monday before heading to Iowa State and then hosting Texas essentially a last stand of sorts if this club has any aspirations of turning things around.
“We’re not trying to settle for anything the goal is to win all five, if we can get four it’s the magic number. We’re still not out of it, there’s pros and cons to this league this year, everybody is really good so that plays to our favor,” senior guard Sean McNeil said. “We’re struggling but we’re not out.”
That message is consistent with how this team has played. Despite the losses mounting, West Virginia has continued to play hard, albeit not smart, and battle each game. The odds of suddenly figuring it out down the stretch are not likely, but it’s happened before and the fact that opportunities are even still there is somewhat amazing considering the funk this team finds itself.
The biggest goals will be to keep the offense from going stagnant as that has been a death sentence at times for this team and to keep players fresh with the three games upcoming this week. The TCU game was rescheduled from earlier in the year but makes for a challenging week all the way around.
Even with the struggles, McNeil shares the optimism that the opportunity is still there for this team if they are able to stay aggressive and clean up their mistakes.
“Just try keep guys mindsets in the right place and put games like this in the past, you’ve got to play present,” McNeil said.
West Virginia has certainly backed themselves into a corner but the book on this season hasn’t been written in ink just yet. That’s the motivation for this coming week, one that will decide essentially everything when it comes to this team’s fortunes.
“It sure makes it a lot harder. There is still opportunity there and as long as there is opportunity there and a chance to keep fighting, we’re going to keep fighting,” Huggins said.
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