West Virginia traveled to Kansas City in hopes of improving their seeding for the NCAA Tournament but that is now out of their hands after falling in the first round.
The Mountaineers entered the event largely projected on the three-line when it comes to seeding but now that remains unclear as the final days of the season wind down.
After back-to-back losses to Oklahoma State, and losing three of the last four, West Virginia can only sit back and watch what else unfolds when it comes to their eventual slotting for the Big Dance. It also has all but eliminated any chance that the Mountaineers end up on the two-line given the results.
Head coach Bob Huggins was asked his thoughts and the veteran head coach is projecting the Mountaineers to still end up with a favorable seed given their overall body of work.
“Probably fall to the three line I would guess,” he said.
It isn’t too wild of a thought for the moment considering that Bracket Matrix, a combination of every bracket available has the Mountaineers cumulatively on the three line. Other individual brackets have them as far down as a four or a five, but obviously the committee will ultimately decide their fate.
A win over the Cowboys would have basically sealed up that opportunity, but the loss leaves that decision up to others instead. It’s not where you ideally want to be at this stage, but it isn’t the worst thing ever considering West Virginia has at least already locked in a spot. But the longer you can avoid playing the top team in the bracket, the better so there are obvious advantages of avoiding the four or five line.
Regardless where the Mountaineers end up in a few days, the finality of it all is starting to set in as we’ve now entered the stretch of the season where a loss equals the end of the year.
While the result was the same against Oklahoma State, the journey was definitely not between the two games as West Virginia came out with much more energy on both ends of the floor.
“We can sit here and talk about this and that, but how about the effort our guys gave,” Huggins said. “Derek wasn’t Derek. When we had him in there, we played four against five because he just couldn’t breathe. I thought our guys gave a great effort. We had the one period of time where we just kind of let down a little bit and threw the ball to them, didn’t get back, didn’t rebound the ball, but other than that, I don’t know what else you can ask of them.”
Now, the focus is entirely on the Big Dance which means that the Mountaineers will return home and piece things together, look at film and rest up ahead of the start to it.
Senior Taz Sherman plans on talking with his teammates and focus on the basketball aspect of things as well as what they can fix and do better. He’ll let the seeding fall where it may.
That’s going to mean defensive rebounding and improving overall on the defense end as two major issues, while the Mountaineers must iron out other aspects on the floor, too.
“Just have a general conversation about what we need to fix and what we need to do to win a national championship because that’s why we’re all here,” he said. "Everybody in that locker room thinks we can we just have to fix the things that need fixing and improve on the things we do best.”
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