Sunday Morning Thoughts: The Truth Behind West Virginia's Disappointing Scoring Duo

Back in the summer, when West Virginia landed a commitment from Honor Huff and flipped Treysen Eaglestaff from South Carolina, it felt like the Mountaineers would have a dynamic duo that would terrorize the Big 12.

Here we are, 14 games in through the 18-game Big 12 slate, and the two have fallen way short of that expectation.

Huff has struggled to see the ball go through the hoop since league play began, knocking down just 37/127 (29%) attempts from three-point range, and his overall field goal percentage is hovering around 30% as well, considering a large chunk of his shot diet is from beyond the arc.

Ross Hodge has tried just about everything under the sun to try and free him up to no avail. Running him off screens, double screens, ghost screens, DHOs, PnRs, putting him on the ball, and so on. Nothing is working.

The problem?

He's unable to create his own shot and doesn't have the confidence to go to the basket. Yes, height is a part of the problem, but there have been other guys in this league who have been successful scorers who were listed under six feet. Those guys knew how make a variety of plays and had more in their bag than Huff. It sounds like harsh criticism, but it's just the truth.

Huff is not made to be the focal point of the offense on a high-major team. A strong secondary player? Yes, absolutely. And the same goes for Treysen Eaglestaff, who is not the same type of scorer as he was at North Dakota in the Summit League.

Eaglestaff has shown spurts of being able to get hot, but those types of games haven't come about very often. He scored 22 and 23 in the wins over Colorado and Arizona State, and since then, he has failed to reach double digits in six of the last eight games.

In the last six games, WVU is 3-3 and should be 5-1 if it weren't for some horrendous shooting. It's not all on Eaglestaff, of course, but in those games, he went 7/28 (25%) from deep. Many of those looks, by the way, were wide-open shots that just didn't go down. He hasn't been smothered as Huff has. It's purely a confidence thing at this point. A seed of doubt was planted early on, and he's been unable to shake free of it.

Both players are talented and capable of playing in this league at a high level, believe it or not. Just not when playing in the role(s) they are forced to play in. They need to be secondary scorers, and because of Hodge being in his first year on the job and being a little behind in the transfer portal, they weren't able to go out and get that Javon Small-type who could score it in all three levels and be that "dude."