Mountaineers Crushed by Jayhawks

Matchup
FG	20-59	28-53
Field Goal %	33.9	52.8
3PT	3-23	8-20
Three Point %	13.0	40.0
FT	10-15	14-18
Free Throw %	66.7	77.8
Rebounds	36	31
Offensive Rebounds	15	6
Defensive Rebounds	21	25
Team Rebounds	0	0
Assists	14	17
Steals	11	7
Blocks	4	6
Total Turnovers	24	19
Fouls	18	16
Technical Fouls	0	0
Flagrant Fouls	0	0

The West Virginia Mountaineers (10-15, 2-10) rolled into the Phog-Allen Fieldhouse to take on the 14^th ranked Kansas Jayhawks (20-6, 9-4) Saturday evening with only nine scholarship players available and came out with a 78-53 loss.

Despite winning the first meeting in Morgantown, there wasn’t much optimism for the Mountaineers heading into Lawrence, KS. They had lost the last three games by an average margin of 26 points, including a 22-point drubbing at home to Texas last week.

The announcement of the dismissals of Wesley Harris and Esa Ahmad on Monday left the Mountaineers with one starter available. They combined an average of 19.9 points and 10.3 rebounds per game and was missed around the rim.

“I think the biggest thing is, those two guys rebounded it for us. If you look at, in the game situations, Esa and Wes made big rebounds.” Said WVU head coach Bob Huggins. “I think the other things we can kinda try to fill in, but we lost probably our second – third best rebounder with Derek being the first. They were all playing together before, now we’re playing Emmitt who is young and Lamont who’s been a three his whole career.

The 25-point loss to the Jayhawks made the fourth 20-point loss in a row for the Mountaineers. With Esa and Wes gone, there was speculation that the team may perform better because the two veteran leaders were poison to the locker room.

That may be the case and its too early to tell, but the play on the floor was a lot of the same. West Virginia played the same poor off the ball defense they’ve played all year and a lot of standing around on offense.

“We haven’t defended all year. We’re horrible.” Proclaimed Huggins. “This is the worst defensive team that I think I’ve ever had. We don’t put any pressure on the ball – we don’t get to the ball – we don’t handle screens very well – we don’t do much right to be honest with you.”

Huggins continued with a perfect example. “We had a situation where we’re talking to them at timeout about putting pressure on the ball and Knap does a great job and makes him pick up at half court and then we let a guy just trot up the sideline and throw the ball to him. That was before everybody was screaming ‘red, red, red, which means don’t let your guy catch the ball. And, he didn’t have to work to catch it. We let them reverse the ball when they wanted. We let them throw it wherever they want. That never happened before.”

There has been one constant bright spot since about the mid-season mark. Freshman Derek Culver has been a force in the paint. Although he still needs to find his touch on the offensive end, he works hard on the glass and had a game high 12 rebounds.

“We’re probably putting too much pressure on Derek to be honest with you. We throw him the ball a lot.” Said Huggins. “He got double teamed today. It’s just hard because he doesn’t know everything. The guy missed the whole first semester. He’s catching up but he’s not all the way call up yet. It’s hard to make adjustments but we gotta have him on the floor.”

This season has been full of injuries, suspensions and now, two players discharged. This young group of Mountaineers that are still available didn’t receive any favors by having their first game at Kansas. It’s tough to get a feel after just one game on the road, but it will be how they bounce back Monday night inside the WVU Coliseum against the Kansas State Wildcats, who currently sit at top of the Big 12 standings.

It’s a tough game no doubt but how they respond these final six games of the regular season may tell us who wants to be a Mountaineers next year.