Following West Virginia's 73-60 loss to Kansas State on Saturday, head coach Darian DeVries knew exactly the issue.
"We just didn't bring the tenacity like I thought we would," DeVries said.
The Mountaineers were on the wrong end of a 19-2 start, as Kansas State never trailed, handing WVU their second loss in as many games.
"We came out and looked flat those first five minutes and then never really recovered," DeVries said.
"Trying to dig your way out of a 24-point hole at half, I think it might have even got up to 27 at one point — that's tough. Certainly gave ourselves some opportunities to maybe make it interesting a couple times, but ultimately, it was just too big of a hole," DeVries said.
Trailing 19-2, the Mountaineers cut the deficit to 13, but couldn't get closer for the remainder of the first half. Part of the reason was not only Kansas State's ability to carve the Mountaineer defense, but also it was West Virginia struggling on offense.
In the first half, West Virginia shot 24 percent from the field and went 1-for-10 from beyond the arc. At the same time, Kansas State shot 53 percent in the opening 20 minutes, making five of their nine 3-pointers.
"It still goes back to our first-half defense, that's it. Whether we're making shots or not, I don't care, that's just part of it. Our first-half defense, we have to be better and we understand that, just like the second-half defense against Arizona State. We're going to win when we play a full 40 minutes of West Virginia basketball and that's being tough, physical, and disciplined on what we're doing," DeVries said.
The Mountaineers tried to creep back into the game in the second half, but the mountain was too tall to climb for the Mountaineers.
West Virginia cut the K-State lead to 14 with 11:05 to play, but couldn't get it under that number until the final two minutes of the game.
"I thought our movement and cutting was better. I thought guys just played harder on both ends, defensively and offensively. Just had a lot more purpose to us and when we do that, that's the results you can have. I guess I told them at halftime, you can't put yourselves in these types of holes and come out of games... it's hard to always keep crawling back," DeVries said.
WVU has now lost two straight games for the first time this season and DeVries said it's part of the complexity of the Big 12. His focus he said is not letting a two-game losing streak turn into a five-game slide.
"This league, it's good. Good league, people have a bad game or two. You can't let it turn into three, four five. So we're going to get on that plane, we're going to go back home, and we're going to get ready for a huge home game on Wednesday," DeVries said.
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