W. Virginia must stop blowing leads
Second-half collapses will kill Mountaineers’ hopes of tournament run
I consider myself a basketball purist. By that I mean I appreciate the old school game —crisp ball movement, solid screens, offensive execution and selfless play. While I get bored by low scoring in football, I love and appreciate a defensive battle on the hardwood.
One would think this means I especially like West Virginia, a team that typically applies so much suffocating defensive pressure they’ve been nicknamed “Press Virginia.”
And yet, when I watch the Mountaineers, I often want to throw my remote at the television.
I imagine Bob Huggins feels similarly after his team blew yet another doubledigit lead in the second half, falling to Kansas 77-69 in Lawrence on Saturday. With 10 minutes to go, West Virginia was firmly in control, leading by 12. Then here came the Jayhawks, attacking the rim, getting to the line and chipping away until finally taking back the lead — and reasserted themselves as a contender for the regular season Big 12 championship. Huggins, furious with the officiating — Kansas shot 35 free throws, compared to two for West Virginia — was ejected with eight seconds to play.
As any coach will tell you, if you know how to play defense, you can be in basically every game. Defense especially gives young, inexperienced teams time to figure things offensively, when that team is still trying to find its identity.
Except WVU is not young, or inexperienced. They start two seniors; their three sophomores were all contributors last year. And even if they’re not upperclassmen yet, we’re 27 games into the season at this point. They have plenty of experience.
Unfortunately, a chunk of that experience has come in blowing double-digit leads. The Mountaineers did it the last time they played Kansas, at one point leading the Jayhawks by 16 in Morgantown. Kansas, which is supposedly more vulnerable this year than in seasons past, came back and won that one, too, 71-66.
West Virginia has also blown doubledigit leads to Kentucky (83-76 UK win) and Texas Tech (72-71 Tech win). The Mountaineers were never in front of TCU by double digits but still managed to blow a seven-point lead and lose that one, too.
Yes, the Big 12 is very tough top to bottom. But the bigger issue is that when WVU is in desperate need of a basket in late-game situations, the Mountaineers don’t seem to have a plan. Like, at all. (Jevon Carter jacking a long-three pointer does not count as a plan, just FYI.)
While Huggins’ gripe about the freethrow discrepancy makes sense on the surface, shouldn’t Bill Self and Kansas get some credit for attacking the rim instead of settling for jump shots? The Jayhawks clearly had a plan, and they executed it.
In last few years, it’s become trendy for hoops pundits to eschew the importance of defense in the NCAA tournament, instead favoring teams that know how to score early and often. I’m not in that camp. Shots don’t always fall; defense is more about effort and therefore, you can make sure it shows up every night even if your offensive rhythm doesn’t.
More importantly, I think you can win as long as you know who you are, even if it’s not “pretty” by societal standards. Virginia is not exactly stacked with NBA players, but the Cavaliers run their system to perfection, slowing opponents way, way down and forcing you to play their way. You might not like how it looks, but it’s tough to argue with the results: Tony Bennett’s team is 24-2, leading the ACC by three games and in line to be the overall No. 1 seed.
West Virginia knows who it is defensively. The Mountaineers force more than 17 turnovers per game, and their relentless pressure — which comes all over the floor, not just in the form of a full-court press — is virtually impossible for opponents to simulate in practice, which gives WVU a big advantage, especially in the quick turnaround format of the NCAA tournament. A trip to its first Final Four since 2010 wouldn’t be out of the question.
But who is WVU offensively? The Mountaineers better find an identity quickly.
March is just around the corner, and teams that don’t know themselves tend to go home early.