Huggstown Weekly Roundup – 3/1/2013

Week In Review

Feb 18, 2013; Manhattan, KS, USA; West Virginia Mountaineers head coach Bob Huggins yells at guard Eron Harris (10) after Harris fouled out during a 71-61 loss to the Kansas State Wildcats at Bramlage Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Scott Sewell-USA TODAY Sports

This week’s update is going to be short but sweet.  This was just not a good week for the Mountaineers.  We dropped two games at home and finished February on a 3 game losing streak.  We’re 2 games under .500 and have pretty much no shot at getting into any post season tournament unless we win a bunch of games in the Big 12 tournament.

As we have so many times this year, we started off strong against Oklahoma State than suffered a big collapse that we could never recover from.  Simply put, we couldn’t shoot, got out rebounded, and played poor defense for long stretches of the Oklahoma State game.  I think effort was a problem in this game, so Huggins tried to make some adjustments for the game against Baylor- he went with a different starting lineup, started the game out in zone defense, and used a different player rotation.  I guess you could say it worked-this game was close throughout, and we had chances to win at the end.  Eron Harris missed an open look at a three with around 17 seconds on the clock, and Staten took a very ill-advised contested three pointers with 7 seconds on the clock that wound up being our final chance to win. That’s the story of our season though- we’ve hurt ourselves far more than any other team could.

As we go into the final three games of the season, it’s very apparent that this team isn’t what we thought it was.  Huggins has repeatedly said himself how surprised he is.  What it comes down to though is the players with the most athletic ability don’t have the drive and the want to, and the guys that do try as hard as they can but they just don’t have the talent of other guys.  It’s a deadly combination.  Eron Harris gives me hope though.  He is a huge bright spot on offense- he can make shots and drive to the basket.  He seems like he really cares and tries hard.  He just needs to work on his defense, which is downright terrible at times.  But I would expect that to get better.  Better years are ahead…

Feb 13, 2013; Waco, TX, USA; West Virginia Mountaineers guard Eron Harris (10) dunks against the Baylor Bears during the second half at the Ferrell Center. Baylor won 80-60. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

Player of the Week:  Eron Harris: 31 points in 57 minutes

Harris scored a career high 25 points against Baylor and was the only reliable offense for us all game.  Unfortunately, 25 points weren’t enough- we needed 28.  But Harris keeps stepping up and is setting himself up to be the focal point of our team next year.

Coming Up:

• Saturday 3/2 @ Kansas
• Wednesday 3/6 @ Oklahoma

We go out on our final road trip of the year, and it’s going to be an ugly one.  We’ve already lost to Oklahoma twice this year, and there’s no reason to believe we’ll beat them again this time around.  We actually had a really good chance at beating Kansas the first time around, and they have been struggling this year, so maybe, just maybe, this is an opportunity for the Mountaineers to ease a little of the pain from the season with a big victory.  I’m not saying it will happen- but the ingredients would seem to be there for an upset.  We’ll see tomorrow…

News and Notes

• Ukranian forward Gerun got some playing time against Baylor.  I liked what I saw out of him- he hustled and seem to have more basketball IQ than the other players on the court.
• Huggs said after the Baylor game that he’s done playing guys that don’t try, don’t make adjustments, don’t listen to him.  We saw that in the Baylor game- Aaric Murray played a couple of minutes than never saw the court again the rest of the night.