Former Mountaineers React to WVU Late Season Collapse

West Virginia has hit a brick wall. They didn't just hit a little bump in the road or came back down to earth a little bit, they have hit a solid 20-foot red brick wall. To start the season, West Virginia got off to an 11-1 start with key wins over Wichita State and then No. 2 Ohio State. Since, the Mountaineers are 8-8 and have slipped to No. 20 in the country and are a projected No. 5 seed in the NCAA tournament.

Several things attribute to the late season collapse including poor free throw shooting, defensive rotations, bad shot selections, and rebounding. Yes, rebounding. In their losses, the Mountaineers are not as dominant on the boards and, at times, Derek Culver goes missing.

Over the course of the last month or so, some former Mountaineer players took to Twitter to voice their thoughts on the team's struggles.

Beat a decent team by 30, lose to a bad team by 20, beating a decent team by 25 at half. Welcome to West Virginia where our sports teams are as random as our weather. I love it
— Nathan Adrian (@Njadrian_11) January 21, 2020

Oscar might be leaving next year for the NBA ..we keep talkin bout next year ..or later.. let’s grow up now!! I’m tired of that we’re young excuse
— john flowers (@jflow41) February 13, 2020

Louder for the folks in the back... https://t.co/GDLF40qgIL
— Alex Ruoff (@ARuoff) February 17, 2020

I love this team but they really are young! No excuses we lost and have to get a lot better but that’s one thing with my 2010 team don’t matter if we was down I knew and they knew we were going to win!
— Truck Bryant (@Truckbryant25) February 25, 2020

U know jucos don’t count as age right? They haven’t played this defense yet either just letting u know if u haven’t played college basketball!
— Truck Bryant (@Truckbryant25) February 25, 2020

As John Flowers pointed out this team is young and although some don't see it as an excuse for losses, it has every bit to do with it. There are seven newcomers on the team and only one (Oscar Tshiebwe) was a highly recruited player that was ready for the college game day one. Sean McNeil and Taz Sherman both hail from the junior college ranks and are still adjusting to the speed of the game and playing in front of crowds bigger than 30 people.

What most people forget is that this team won only 15 games a year ago. The expectation coming into the season was that this would be year one of getting West Virginia basketball back on track, not back to the Big 12 championship.

This group exceeded expectations out of the jump and changed everyone's expectations without remembering where this team was a year ago and how those who came back from last year's team (McCabe, Matthews, Culver) are essentially redshirt freshman. Culver played the most, but missed half of the season due to a suspension, while Matthews and McCabe didn't see much floor time until the latter half of the regular season.

One of the reasons they performed better towards the end of last season is there wasn't much film on the freshmen and if you look at the two wins at the tail end of the regular season, they were at home.

There's still plenty of time for West Virginia to salvage the rest of their season and make a run in the NCAA tournament, but if they don't - it was expected. This group is still extremely young and is learning the ups and downs of college basketball.

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