Wednesday was West Virginia's third loss in eight days.
Head coach Darian DeVries hopes improved play in the second half carries over to their upcoming road trip as he knows there are plenty of opportunities remaining.
"The good part about the second half is the outcome; that’s not what we wanted, but the good part of the second half is they felt it again. They felt what that was like in terms of how do we play at a high, high, level, and what does that mean, what does that look like," DeVries said.
The Mountaineers trailed by 20 at the break but worked it back to a five-point deficit twice in the second half. WVU had multiple opportunities to get it even closer, but couldn't convert.
"It’s funny, in basketball, sometimes, those swings can happen so fast. You can go from winning at home against Iowa State to losing a couple and your confidence level can be shaken that quickly and that’s where you have to really fight it as a coaching staff, as a team, to make sure you stay together and don’t let losses start to impact the next game," DeVries said.
West Virginia has now lost to Arizona State, Kansas State, and Houston, with two of those losses coming at home. WVU is now 4-5 in Quad 1 games, with four left in the regular season. They are also 1-2 in Quad 2 games with two remaining this year.
"The first half felt like our last two games to be honest with you. We just haven’t played with the same spirit that we had prior to that. I thought the second half, if we’ll get back to that and do that for a full 40 minutes, we’re going to be right there right where we need to be to win games down the stretch," DeVries said.
He added that his message for his team at the end of the game was not to think about how they played in the first half, but rather how they started the second half, hoping to inspire confidence in his group.
"That’s the thing I hope we grab onto. I told them to leave this building only focused on what it looked like and felt like in the second half and make that their mindset again and approach as we go into practice and get ready for Cincinnati. That team in that 15-minute stretch, we’ll take anywhere because they’ll go compete and line up and do some things that can be pretty special," DeVries said.
WVU hits the road for a two-game swing, facing Cincinnati and TCU. Those games are a Quad 1 and Quad 2 games respectively.
"Like I told the guys, it’s a long season, it’s tough, it’s a grind, and we still got 11 games left. So, there’s lots of opportunities out there to go win games. They’ve put themselves in a good position to survive in a stretch like this, where you go through a three-game losing streak. At some point, you got to put the breaks on, and we got to get back on the other side of that column. Every night there’s an opportunity going forward where it’s a Quad 1, Quad 2 type game, and we got to win our share of those," DeVries said.
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