Sky is not falling, but changes must start now for West Virginia basketball

Bob Huggins wasn’t upset, wasn’t angry following his team’s road loss at Baylor, the third consecutive defeat for the Mountaineers over a grueling stretch of the schedule.

No, he was none of that. Instead the veteran head coach seemed somewhat optimistic.

“The sky isn’t falling,” he said.

Huggins highlighted that at 18-7, West Virginia would still be perched around No. 10 in the NCAA NET rankings and he was right. The Mountaineers are right there at No. 10. They also are projected as a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament, a drop from the two line but not a sizable one.

All of that is true, this team is still very much cemented in the national picture for now. That last part of the sentence is what’s important because while losses at Oklahoma, at home against Kansas and then the road trip to Baylor has the look that things are falling apart, it’s still very much salvageable.

But some things have to change.

“Now we have to go take care of business. If we go take care of our business the way we plan on taking care of our business, we’ll still be in the top ten in the NET,” Huggins said.

Right at the top of that list is turnovers, and not the edible kind. The Mountaineers matched a season high with 22 turnovers resulting in 21 Baylor points off live-ball miscues.

That results in a 30.1-percent turnover rate which makes things almost impossible to win against some of the quality clubs nationally.

“If there’s a positive most of our guys continue to play, continue to fight it. We did some dumb things where the game could have been closer, could have gotten it closer and a little more manageable but we can’t keep throwing them the ball,” Huggins said. “Live ball turnovers are death.”

The Bears also put on a clinic in ball movement, something that has not been a strength of West Virginia of late as the offense has bogged down and shots aren’t falling. Over the last three games, the Mountaineers have shot a combined 32-percent (62-191) despite getting 41 more shot attempts than the opposition over the span. They simply aren’t making shots or running offense.

Those are trends that have to change on both fronts, but with six regular season games left it’s fair to wonder where this team is at entering the stretch run.

Damage has been done, sure, but it’s not something that can’t be reversed considering that the program has dealt with playing two likely number one seeds in the past three games. That will start by hosting Oklahoma State Tuesday night as the Mountaineers look to stop the bleeding.

Or else a once promising season could end up lost.

“Mountaineer fans don’t give up on us. Don’t quit. We’re not going to quit. We need them not to quit, we need the student body there in full force, we need people filling the seats,” Huggins said.

“It isn’t over but certain things have to change,” he added.

----------

• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.

• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.

• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel

• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan, @PatrickKotnik

•Like us on Facebook