Huggs: 'I've Let the Great Fans in This State Down; We're a Bad Basketball Team Right Now'
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WVU head coach Bob Huggins felt like his team had turned the corner following a close loss on the road at Oklahoma and then by defeating No. 14 TCU on Wednesday. That feeling didn't last all but a few days as the Mountaineers returned to their old ways turning the ball over 20 times in defeat Saturday against No. 7 Texas.
"We're a bad basketball team right now," Huggins said in his postgame interview with Tony Caridi. "We've got to get it fixed. I'm going to work like crazy to do everything that I can possibly do. It's frustrating. It's humiliating. You can make excuses. You can say the portal thing was new and we didn't know what we were doing which we didn't, but neither did anybody else. You think maybe you got the right guys but in hindsight maybe you didn't."
The turnovers played a big part in this one and the unfortunate part about it is many of those were unforced. Sloppy ballhandling, being careless with the ball, poor passing, poor decisions, and maybe even a little bit of panic led to the absurd amount of turnovers. Although it was arguably the biggest reason why WVU lost the game, it wasn't the only reason.
"There's issues that I'm not at liberty to talk about," said Huggins. "We had opportunities. But we've had opportunities in the other games we've lost too. We didn't seize opportunities. You can't turn the ball over 20 times. We talked about that earlier in the year...said we were going to fix it. We had it down to where we were maybe turning it over six times a game, which isn't good but it's way better than 20. And now we're back to 20 and not playing against pressure. We just throw the ball to the wrong team. Can't miss free throws. Particularly can't miss free throws when you're trying to catch up. We did that. If you want a recipe for losing, just go back and look at our last ten minutes."
What seemingly irritates Huggins the most with this team is the desire to win. A few weeks back he talked about how there is no "will to win" with this group. If you don't have that, this league will eat you alive. On Saturday night, that was put on display in the second half.
"It's frustrating. What kills me is, I set here and say we'll fix it. The people in the state of West Virginia, I told them I will fix it. And I thought we were on that road to fixing it and then, obviously, we're not. It's frustrating. I'm not the kind of person that wants to let people down. It hurts me to let people down and I feel like I've let the great fans in this state down. I mean, we had 14,100 some people here. To play like that? I would have thought we would be really jacked up for it. I didn't see a lot of emotion or enthusiasm."
So, can Bob fix it? That's a good question.
There are guys on this roster that are what I consider to be repeat offenders in terms of turnovers, missed free throws, taking bad shots, not staying in front of their man, fouling, and so on. At some point, Huggins has to be willing to change it up and follow through with some of his postgame comments in regard to playing time. Over the last several weeks, Huggins has talked about how some guys aren't putting the time in at the gym or in the film room and it shows. I have my opinion on who those guys may be, but in all honesty, I have no clue. No one does. We don't get to see what goes on behind the scenes. Only Huggins, the players, and the coaching staff do.
What I do know is running the same lineups out there game after game with the expectation of having better results is the definition of insanity. So in that case, no. It won't be fixed. The only way it changes is if changes are made.
With the loss, West Virginia now sits at 11-8 on the season with a 1-6 record in Big 12 play. The bad news? It doesn't get any easier. They'll travel to Texas Tech on Wednesday which is a winnable game considering the Red Raiders remain winless in conference play. But then the Mountaineers return home for the Big 12/SEC Challenge against Auburn which is followed up with a rematch in Fort Worth with TCU.
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