MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — As bad as 80-69 looked at the end of Monday night’s loss to Texas, the gap was much wider throughout most of the second half when the Longhorns threatened to outright embarrass West Virginia on its home court.
And as disappointed as Bob Huggins was to see his team undercut a 2-0 Big 12 road start with an 0-2 homestand, he took at least a smidgen of consolation from the way his players continued scrapping after falling behind by 21 points.
“They didn’t quit. That in itself is a start,” Huggins said. “They’re going to keep playing. They’re not going to lay it down, and it would have been easy to the way that we shot it.
“We played until the end. We tried to get back in the game, and if we could have made a shot we could have got back in the game.”
After entering the night as the nation’s 35th-ranked 3-point shooting team at 39.7 percent, West Virginia (10-7, 2-2 Big 12) clanked through a season-worst 4-of-25 performance. With Eron Harris going 0-of-7 and Terry Henderson 1-of-6, the Mountaineers looked futile against the Texas zone defense.
Huggins suspected the cold shooting led to other mistakes.
“You go 4-for-25, it drains your energy,” Huggins said. “You don’t make shots, you put your head down. You make shots, you play harder.”
Though both teams were only 48 hours removed from playing close games, Texas (13-4, 2-2) certainly looked fresher. Perhaps that was a by-product of UT using Sunday purely as a travel day while West Virginia practiced, but Huggins dismissed the assertion.
“We didn’t go very long yesterday,” he said. “We were here, but you watch a lot of film, you walk through stuff. I would venture to say (the players) weren’t on their feet more than an hour.”
Watch Huggins’ complete postgame news conference above.