MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The latest West Virginia mercy-killing was nearly 20 minutes old Tuesday night and yet no players had filtered into the media room.
Bad sign for the Mountaineers, because Bob Huggins doesn’t take that long to say “Nice job.”
After leading Radford by 31 points at halftime, No. 11 West Virginia coasted to an 84-57 victory — a comfortable margin constructed on bouts of lethargy that made Huggins entirely uncomfortable. Outrebounded for the game, outscored in the second half, and at times slow to feed the turnover engine, the Mountaineers enjoyed their second-smallest margin of victory this season.
While West Virginia’s younger players failed to provide production (leading to a nominal 33-25 edge in bench scoring), Huggins seemed most frustrated by older players who didn’t allow for a proper orientation.
“We have six freshmen. I wanted to make sure we could get them in games because we’re going to need them,” he said. “And we’ve been able to do that, but you want your other guys to be constants for you, and they certainly weren’t.”
Huggins didn’t name veteran names but Teyvon Myers was 1-of-4 shooting in a season-low 7 minutes. Elijah Macon missed 6-of-7 shots at the rim and grabbed only one rebound in 11 minutes. Several upperclassmen shared the blame for a lackluster second half and repeated Nathan Adrian’s refrain about “needing to play a full 40 minutes against good teams.”
Thing is, throughout much of the nonconference, West Virginia hasn’t faced good teams. Aside from the monumental win at Virginia and splitting games in Brooklyn against Illinois and Temple, this has been a laughable slate of scrimmages.
The Wednesday strength-of-schedule rankings for the Big 12 show what any fan who sat through a game at the Coliseum this year already knows: West Virginia built its 10-1 record against soft competition.
RPI No. 2 Baylor — SOS: 15th
RPI No. 7 Kansas — SOS: 20th
RPI No. 18 TCU — SOS: 75th
RPI No. 44 Oklahoma State — SOS: 111th
RPI No. 58 West Virginia — SOS: 220th
RPI No. 69 Texas Tech — SOS: 241
RPI No. 73 Kansas State — SOS: 256
RPI No. 125 Iowa State — SOS: 228th
RPI No. 136 Texas — SOS: 48th
RPI No. 185 Oklahoma — SOS: 194th
Some of this involves timing, because the verdict on the nonconference SOS won’t be filed until Jan. 28 against Texas A&M. Had the SEC Challenge remained a December event, there wouldn’t be as many complaints about the wretched stretch of small-conference foes. There’s also Friday’s game against RPI No. 132 Northern Kentucky (7-3), which is at least a decent outfit from the Horizon League, which is ranked 17th out of 32 conferences in Division I.
To WVU’s credit, it has put away these outmanned teams quickly. And to WVU’s detriment, it has put away these outmanned teams quickly. Guard Tarik Phillip explains:
“We get up so big in the first half and everybody’s acting like we’ve done won the game already. I don’t want to say we take plays off but that really is what we do — we take plays off.”
The senior guard answered honestly when asked if he would have preferred some stronger competition.
“Me personally, I like the competition. I like the games when it’s neck-and-neck,” he said, “So to be honest I would’ve liked a tougher schedule, but it’s a reason for everything.”
That reason, of course, dates back to the spring when Huggins and Billy Hahn shaped the schedule in a way to facilitate developing those six freshmen.
Once conference play begins Dec. 30, we’ll learn whether that was the right call.