Not a game to show NCAA Selection Committee to begin WVU push for the NCAA tournament
SHEPHERDSTOWN — Put that one in the shade somewhere.
In what has become a stretch of games where WVU wants to shower the NCAA men’s basketball tournament selection committee with indelible proof it belongs in the so-called Big Dance, the Mountaineers will want to hide the tape of its lop-sided, 94-60, loss at Texas.
Already trailing the on-fire Longhorns, 51-30 at the half, West Virginia couldn’t overcome its messy 20 turnovers, 35 percent shooting from the field and raucous crowd to avoid a stunning loss. The conference game was played at 11 o’clock Central Daylight Time but it seemed only the Longhorns were ready for the nationally televised game.
Left with a 15-10 overall record and quick-turnaround game in Waco against fiery Baylor on Feb. 13 (Monday), West Virginia needed more than a little soul searching or scouting report information to find a way to give the NCAA people a taste of tournament style basketball.
Baylor was a Top 20 team that boosted its already solid resume when it topped TCU, 72-68, last Saturday on the road in Fort Worth.
A loss to Baylor would inch West Virginia’s already precarious record back to 15-11 and mean winning at home against both Texas Tech and Oklahoma State was imperative.
And then come back-to-back road games at Kansas and Iowa State before the regular season finale in Morgantown versus Kansas State on March 4.
Losing to Texas was not unexpected . . . but losing by 34 points was a little out of the ordinary.
As of Monday of this week, there were so many teams in the country with 17-9, 16-9 and similar records, that West Virginia badly needed to do more than point to its location in the Big 12 Conference to persuade anybody it belonged in the NCAA tournament.
The selection people will not penalize the Mountaineers for losing games within the Big 12, but they will want reasons for including West Virginia, besides noticing all the other league teams crawling safely into the much-publicized event’s field.
Was the Texas drubbing an aberration? Was it because of the early start time? Or was it because West Virginia is not a very consistent team?
At any rate, hide that one from the prying eyes of the selection committee and get on with finding the ways to lower the number of turnovers and make more than 35 percent of its field goal attempts.
The selection committee will pour over the season’s statistics, film clips and passionate pleas from all the other teams in the same circumstance as West Virginia.