WVU looking to return the favor to Sooners

No. 13/14 West Virginia (18-5, 6-4) will look to rebound after falling over the weekend and will have an opportunity to do that by avenging an earlier loss against Oklahoma on the road.

The Mountaineers fell 82-75 over the weekend at home against Oklahoma State, who came into the game a double-digit underdog. It was the same thing that happened a few weeks earlier when the Mountaineers lost at home to Oklahoma in overtime.

In that game, Sooners senior guard Jordan Woodward scored 20 points including the game-winning basket on a straight line drive. The Mountaineers struggled to keep Woodard in front of them and overall half-court defense was an issue as the Sooners shot almost 50-percent from the field.

“We didn’t guard him. We were constantly in retreat mode and that’s not our persona,” head coach Bob Huggins said of Woodard.

West Virginia also struggled to create miscues forcing only 12 turnovers against the Sooners while having 13 themselves in Morgantown. Huggins said that the team has focused on watching film in the days after the loss to Oklahoma State while incorporating more five-on-five in practice.

“We’re still trying to stop things and point things out with what was hurting us,” he said.

Since the win over West Virginia, Oklahoma has dropped five straight games in a transition season after losing four of their top five scorers from last year.

One player that West Virginia will look to get jumpstarted is sophomore Esa Ahmad, who is coming off a 14-minute performance where he didn’t score and only had one assist to his credit. Huggins has made it a point to instruct him to be more assertive on both ends of the floor.

“The term is bouncier,” Huggins added.

Effort overall has been an issue cited by the players in some of the losses this season and Huggins continues to question how that could be when they work as hard as they do to prepare. He has noticed at times that practice doesn’t have the same intensity which could be a sign.

“That’s generally a clue,” he said.

After the loss to Oklahoma State, West Virginia has little room for error down the stretch if it wants to compete for a Big 12 Championship and that means not only going on the road to beat Oklahoma but trying to do that in the home gyms of potential number one seeds Kansas and Baylor.

“That would certainly move us up,” he said.

The Oklahoma game is set to tip off at 9 p.m.