WVU basketball: Second half woes need to stop soon

The WVU basketball team is struggling right now and the potential fixes to the problems are pretty clear.

The Mountaineers need to be able to close out games. That’s just not happening right now and it’s been a constant issue this whole season.

The Mountaineers have led by at least seven points in all five of their losses. In four of their five losses, they’ve held double digit leads. The WVU basketball team is doing enough to get out ahead of its opponents, but it isn’t maintaining leads or looking to have a dominate finish.

In the past five games, the one exception would be West Virginia’s win against Texas. However, after leading by 10 points at halftime, the Longhorns cut that lead to under five points rather quickly early in the second half. It looked like the same old Mountaineers.

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But miraculously, the WVU basketball put the foot on the gas and wound up winning by 35 points. Why weren’t the Mountaineers able to pull of something similar against Kentucky? Quite frankly, UK is a better team than Texas. Even though the Wildcats aren’t the typical top-of-the-heap Wildcats this season, they are still loaded with talent. They have an identical 16-5 record as the WVU basketball team and provided they are better in a head-to-head match up.

West Virginia needs to figure out its offensive production and not look so lost when things start to go south. It appeared early on that the WVU basketball team had a decent amount of depth. Now, while head coach Bob Huggins will play up to 12 players in a game, it doesn’t always mean that they are ready for a huge challenge.

Teddy Allen hasn’t shown he can be a consistent player, Esa Ahmad has fallen off from last season, Lamont West can’t seem to put it all together and Wesley Harris may not be a huge threat. Even the guards, Jevon Carter and Daxter Miles, play streaky most times.

They players have shown they can score early, but they can’t score often. A lot of the reasons for the losses falls solely on the players, but now it’s become an epidemic. Huggins needs to light a fire in this squad to close out games.

Next: All-time WVU basketball team

This team has all the potential in the world and should be unbeaten, at least in conference play. It’s a shame to see things like this go to waste when there is so much potential out there.