West Virginia head basketball coach Josh Eilert understands that with 11 regular games remaining in the season, his team has their backs against the wall.
The Mountaineers sit at 7-13 and 2-5 in the difficult Big 12 Conference coming off back-to-back deflating road losses after it seemed the team was turning the corner.
It’s been a season of well-documented challenges with the roster, suspensions and health issues across the board but now heading into the 21st game of the year West Virginia has an opportunity to close the season in the right way.
With center Jesse Edwards now back and working his way toward becoming healthier, the Mountaineers likely will have their full complement of roster pieces at their disposal.
It would be a difficult task to expect the program to completely reverse their fortunes at this stage, but this basketball team could start to build momentum. It’s the message Eilert keeps telling his team.
“We have a lot to play for and a lot to prove as we progress through the conference season because now we finally have everybody. Is it hard to build that chemistry midway through the hardest conference in the country? Absolutely it is, but let’s flush the past right now and strive for growth,” Eilert said.
It won’t turn without the players believing it and Eilert is placing the focus on figuring out how this team can maximize their potential moving forward.
This team clearly isn’t where anybody on the roster expected it to be at this stage of the season, but Eilert has been encouraged by how his team has received the message. Now, it’s about trying to put that together on the floor to showcase what this team could have been from game one.
“That’s all we can do right now,” he said.
The two biggest items that must be addressed are in the areas of discipline and consistency. The Mountaineers have struggled to minimize mistakes and do the right things at times while the only consistent thing about this team through 20 games has been inconsistency.
Related: West Virginia center Edwards works his way back, ready for more
With that comes the struggles on the road as West Virginia has yet to win a game away from Morgantown this season and that is going to have to change. The challenge is trying to manufacture and capture that same effort and energy on the road that the team gets from feeding off the home crowd.
Addressing those areas will be key to taking this team anywhere close to their goals and there is also the added bonus at the end of the season waiting in the Big 12 Conference Tournament. Regardless of how things play out to that point, that at least gives the Mountaineers a shot at post-season play.
It isn’t unheard of either as Eilert and his staff have shown this team examples of other clubs that have turned their seasons around and even found their way into the NCAA Tournament in the process.
Whether that remains to occur is far off at this stage, but for Eilert, it starts one game at a time.
“Why can’t that be us? We’re finally whole. If we have the right mindset moving forward and we strive for growth, why not us?” he said.
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