Huggins Foreshadowing Departures? 'We've Had Attitudes Creep In'

Frustration is starting to set in with this Mountaineer team.

The West Virginia Mountaineers dropped their fourth straight game on Wednesday night falling to Oklahoma 72-62. This now puts WVU at 13-6 (2-5) on the season and most likely on the outside looking in of the NCAA Tournament.

Many of the same recurring issues popped up on the offensive end which has been a sore spot for the Mountaineers all season long. With frustration mounting, some players are beginning to change according to Huggins. 

"We've had some attitudes creep in that don't need to be there, that's my job as well," Huggins said in his postgame radio interview with Tony Caridi. "Growing up my dad always talked to me about my attitude, my attitude, my attitude and I'm like man, leave me alone. When your attitude goes, your game goes. You can see that from the NBA down. We have guys who aren't the same people. For that matter, I'm not sure I am."

How can you fix a bad attitude? Well, you remove the problem. That's what Huggins has done in the past and will likely do once again. 

"The honest to God's truth, you cut it out which I really don't want to do but if that's what it takes, that's what it takes. You know, we did that before here and it worked out pretty good. The guys that got cut were guys that had bad attitudes but were very talented guys. They destroyed the core of our team. Can't do that."

If you remember a couple of years back, during the middle of the season Huggins dismissed Esa Ahmad and Wesley Harris, two veteran starters from the team. At that point in the year the Mountaineers were already well out of contention for the NCAA Tournament but toward the end, the young core of Jordan McCabe, Emmitt Matthews Jr., and Derek Culver started to play better and figure things out. 

During his postgame press conference with the media, Huggins mentioned that a pair freshmen, one being forward Jamel King was "really good" in practice. Huggins didn't confirm but it sounded like the other was guard Seth Wilson.

"They had really good weeks. And actually they beat the guys who played. They were on the second team running the stuff that we needed to guard and they destroyed those guys." He later mentioned that there was a possibility of playing them but he didn't want to send the wrong message to the team in doing so. 

"If you play them it's like you've given up but the reality is I'm not sure we wouldn't have been better with them in the game. We're probably going to find out here real quick.

"I take full responsibility. I do understand how much this means to Mountaineer Nation and the people of West Virginia. It eats me up, man it just it's me up. I promise those people, I will do everything in my power to try to fix this. That may mean some of those guys will no longer be with us but if that's what it takes, then that's what we have to do."

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