Through five Big 12 games, West Virginia sits at the bottom of the Big 12. And despite the early struggles, the Mountaineers are still confident they can get things fixed.
In West Virginia’s first five conference games of the year, the Mountaineers have had a chance to win four of those games.
Against Kansas State, it was the second half collapse and the loss in overtime. Against Oklahoma State it was the Erik Stevenson incident. Against Baylor, the Mountaineers battled until the end. And then West Virginia came even closer to a win on Saturday against Oklahoma when they had multiple chances to take the lead in the final minute of the game, until they lost 77-76 to the Sooners.
“We’re getting closer,” West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins said. “We’re not by any stretch the worst team in the league. We’ve had some things happen. We’ve had some things happen at end of games.”
The biggest issue for West Virginia though has been the free throw shooting. West Virginia went 8 for 16 from the line against Oklahoma Saturday and since the beginning of Big 12 play, the Mountaineers have gone a combined 87 for 143 from the free throw line, good enough for a 60.8% mark.
“I plan on getting in the gym and doing something about it but everybody has to do it,” West Virginia forward Tre Mitchell said of the struggles at the line. “You can’t force people to get in the gym and shoot free throws, it has to be their choice. It really comes down to how much you care about the dudes who are in the uniform with you and the name on the front of the uniform — how much are you willing to sacrifice for those people.”
Mitchell was one of the main culprits in the free throw department, missing a pair of technical foul free throws, and then splitting a pair with the opportunity to take the lead.
Mitchell and Huggins both believe this team is close. Mitchell said the amount of talent West Virginia has can be a bad thing.
“We’re close, we’re not far off, we’re so close,” Mitchell said. “We are so talented that everybody thinks it’s their turn. I think that we need to start understanding that it can be anybody’s night, any given night.”
Huggins echoed Mitchell’s sentiment, saying part of the reason for the slow start is having all these different pieces on the team still figuring each other out.
“You put all those in a mixing pot it’s going to take us a little while,” Huggins said of the meshing between his team. “Now when everybody gets to clicking and understand gin what one another does a little bit better, don’t worry about us being 0-5, we’re going to catch up fast.”
The free throws at one point were not the only problem for Huggins. Against Kansas State, the Mountianeers turned the ball over 20 times. In West Virginia’s second conference game against Oklahoma State, the Mountaineers committed another 15 turnovers.
In West Virginia’s two games this week against Baylor and Oklahoma, a combined 15 turnovers in those two games. Huggins sees the improvement with the turnovers, and hopes there will be the same kind of turnaround with West Virginia’s success at the free throw line.
“I think for all the doubters out there, we’re going to be a good team. You watch us, you know that — we’re going to be a good team,” Huggins said. “Now do we got to make free throws, that’s got to change… when we first started we couldn’t make free throws and we couldn’t pass it to our team. We’ve fixed that, that part we fixed. Now we got to fix the free throw shooting or make sure that those guys who can’t make them don’t get to the free throw line.”
Discover more from Blue Gold Sports
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
