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Bob Huggins can recognize that sometimes his team just makes the game of basketball hard.

Much harder than it needs to be.

“They do but fundamentally we’re just so bad. Those are things that we’re going to work on this summer,” he said. “We’re going to work on when we go to Spain. We’re going to work on it in the pre-season so this doesn’t happen again.”

But that’s the future, for now West Virginia still has a season to complete sitting at 11-18 with two regular season games left and then of course the Big 12 Conference tournament. And the reason for his team’s struggles with some of those fundamental aspects of the game?

Well, Huggins points the finger right back at himself.

“At the end of the day it’s my fault and I told them it’s my fault,” he said.

With so many new players on the roster, Huggins understood that there was a lot to learn heading into the season and they jumped ahead on some of the basic fundamentals of the game into other items. Things that were needed if West Virginia wanted to handle what was ahead.

“Instead of teaching them how to pivot; teaching them how to pass; teaching really the fundamental things of basketball. Kids by and large come in today very unprepared fundamentally,” he said.

Still even with those breakdowns it’s another area that truly bothered the veteran head coach during his team’s 92-80 loss to Oklahoma. It was something that doesn’t go over well in his locker room.

“I didn't think we competed. I thought this group, although not the most talented, was like the old guys. I thought they were going to compete and we didn't compete today. It wasn't everybody. Some guys gave great effort but there were a few though that just didn't give us any effort,” he said.

It was so much of an issue that Huggins elected to do a full hockey-style substitution late in the game and pull five players to insert a new lineup. That group fared much better down the stretch but overall, that approach is one that Huggins believes is inexcusable from an effort standpoint.

West Virginia led against the Sooners 17-9 in the first half but allowed a 33-11 run to close the half which featured a now almost trademark field goal drought to go along with 12 turnovers.

“Here is our biggest problem we make mistakes in a cluster … And the other thing to compound that we don’t make open shots,” Huggins said.

The Mountaineers will now return home for the final home game of the season against Iowa State, a team that handled West Virginia in the first meeting in Ames.

Huggins understands that it’s going to require a much better effort on both ends of the floor than what unfolded Saturday. One of those is going to have to be on the defensive end where the Sooners shot 59-percent.

“We're going to have to play really well, which I think we're capable of doing. But we're going to have to take some things away from them that we didn't take away from Oklahoma today,” he said.

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