West Virginia’s 66-57 win over Kansas State in Morgantown Saturday afternoon was the fourth of its kind this season.
The Mountaineers have been able to answer each of their four losses this season with a victory in the game following.
It started on Dec. 12 when West Virginia blew out Austin Peay after suffering their first loss of the season to St. John’s inside Madison Square Garden. Next, it was Jan. 6 when the team beat Oklahoma State on the road by 14 points following a loss to Kansas in Lawrence.
After that, a rout of Texas got West Virginia back in the win column after a defeat in Manhattan by the Wildcats and then on Saturday, the Mountaineers got their revenge on Kansas State after suffering a road loss to Texas Tech last Wednesday.
West Virginia’s ability to respond with wins following losses is a testament to the turnaround head coach Bob Huggins has done with the program as well as the strides this year’s team has made. Last season’s squad went 15-21 and didn’t win consecutive games once Big 12 play began during the regular season.
“We’re resilient,” sophomore forward Emmitt Matthews said after the team’s win over Texas. “Last year, I think our problem was when we won a game, which was pretty rare, we would win games and then we’d get so happy that we’d come out the next game and we wouldn’t be ready to play and you know I think it just goes to show that when we lose a game that we come out and we play like we wanna win and it’s a big advantage at home.”
The home court advantage is something that West Virginia has had in three of the four games that took place after a defeat this season.
In those three games, the Mountaineers won by an average margin of 26 points with the 9-point win over Kansas State being the outlier. The other two games, wins over Austin Peay and Texas, West Virginia won by 31 and 38 points.
“You give credit to the fans,” Matthews said. “They show up, they show out every night and we just try to give them something to cheer for.”
The trick is to not get too high or too low, but sometimes, a team is able to take advantage of another when it’s at its most vulnerable. According to Huggins, that can come after a big win and that happened to West Virginia when it lost to Kansas following a win over then-No. 2-ranked Ohio State in Cleveland in late December.
“Anybody who’s coached for awhile will tell you it’s so much harder to get up after a big win than it is a loss--any kind of loss,” Huggins said.
“Coach (Bob) Knight used to say all the time, ‘You wanna play’em after a big win,’ and as good as we were at Cincinnati sometimes like we went in and beat Louisville, beat the heck out of Louisville and they were top-5 in the country. And I think we were top-5 in the country and it was a great game and we beat them and then we go lose the next game because we just couldn’t get ready to play.”
All four of West Virginia’s losses have come on the road (the Mountaineers are 11-0 at home) with three of them occurring in opposing Big 12 environments. Even with the team’s success this year, there have still been some growing pains with the roster comprising of nine freshmen and sophomores and a pair of juniors who were both new to the program coming into this season.
But if West Virginia wants to contend for a Big 12 title and beyond this season, the Mountaineers are going to have to win road games in tough environments and know that they’ll get everyone’s best shot down the stretch since they’re ranked in the top-15.
“We’re the youngest team, in the Power 5, the youngest,” Huggins said the day before West Virginia’s win over Kansas State. “We’re 300th in the country. There’s 299 (teams) with more experience than us. It’s not that we’re young, we are really young. So does it make a difference? Sure, it makes a difference.”
One thing that has helped the team this season and can become a key factor in its growth down the stretch is its chemistry.
With how young West Virginia is due in part to the amount of roster turnover that occurred from last season until now, it will take everyone being on the same page for the Mountaineers to get as far as they want to go.
“It’s no different from the team (Jevon Carter) and (Daxter Miles) was here. They was great leaders, but the team was so close and everybody had the same goal,” redshirt sophomore Brandon Knapper said.
“I mean they went to the Sweet 16, I feel like we can go farther than that this year and just because we stay together. Everybody loves each other, everybody has the same goal, everybody’s in the gym with each other and it’s just fun being on this team.”
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