COMMENTARY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The refrain, now too familiar for West Virginia, bears the same cadence, the same conclusion: Fiery start fades to flimsy finish.
What portended to be a monumental night at the Coliseum, with decibels soaring, glow-sticks glowing and Kentucky on the cusp of crack, briskly U-turned into an 83-76 defeat.
These Mountaineers of late have shown a tendency to streak out and then freak out. Up by 11 points in Lubbock with 12 minutes to play. Up 12 on Kansas inside of nine minutes. Up 17 (twice) on the Wildcats in the second half. All became losses.
“I don’t know,” pondered West Virginia sixth man Beetle Bolden. “We don’t try to go out there and lose the lead. I don’t know the answer to that.”
Two shooting droughts (in which poor shooting is actually the culmination of poor decisions or disorganization) wrecked the Mountaineers and gave rise to the rally. A 1-for-12 stretch spanned six agonizing minutes when a 54-37 cushion became a 58-56 deficit.
Then, over the game’s closing seven minutes, a 3-for-13 sequence sealed West Virginia’s demise. Only two of those shots came in the paint and both were swatted away by UK’s 6-9 sophomore Wenyen Gabriel.
With Jevon Carter, Beetle Bolden and Sagaba Konate combining for 56 points, the remaining Mountaineers made 6-of-27 shots. That included an 0-of-7 night for Esa Ahmad, whose much-awaited reinstatement from suspension now coincides with four losses in five games.
Daxter Miles had Bob Huggins stewing over a premature misfire from 3-point range. Miles tried three other times from deep, missed them all, and now languishes at 25 percent for the season, the But-Coach-I’m-Due stat of the moment.
While Konate continues to avail himself as a low-post threat, a fourth foul forced him to the bench at the 9:40 mark. He checked in again at 2:29.
Spots like this should be ideal for the 6-foot-8 Ahmad, but he was on the bench too, scrubbed for poor play and a lack of physicality against the Kentucky bigs. Which led to a curious offensive happenstance: During the game’s final 10 minutes, no West Virginia’ player over 6-3 attempted a shot.
Carter chose his words judiciously after another episode of WVU being very tough early and rather helpless late:
— What did Coach Huggs say after the game? “A lot.”
— How do you make the offense less stagnant? “Haven’t figured that out yet.”
Perplexing angles revealed themselves on defense too. Like, how can the halftime performer train a chihuahua to log-roll a basketball when Huggins can’t train his players to deny one to Kevin Knox? The Kentucky one-and-doner buried unimpeded looks from 3-point range and had enough pressure-free catches to exploit driving lanes.
Knox broke out for 34 points, joining Andrew Wiggins, Ben McLemore, Jeremy Hazel and Dominique Jones as the only WVU opponents to score so abundantly during the Huggins era.
John Calipari joked that he expects to be coaching against West Virginia again come March, in the NCAA Tournament, where the selection committee displays an uncanny knack for pairing these programs within the same bracket.
The Wildcats entered the weekend projected as a No. 5 seed by Joe Lunardi, with WVU slotted at a No. 3. You could flip those seedings based on what transpired here in the second half, where Kentucky flipped on its comeback engine and West Virginia played the victim again.