COMMENTARY
FORT WORTH, Texas — While the rest of the Mountain State simply would like to experience a Big 12 win, West Virginia basketball coach Bob Huggins would like to see something else from his players:
Leadership.
Up to this point, this season has been spent trying to break down some numbers that helped explain this or that.
Numbers that pointed to a lack of defense or a lack of offense or a lack of defensive pressure or a lack of a 3-point presence or ……
That’s the thing about basketball, there are enough numbers in the game that could literally explain hundreds of things that go along with bouncing an orange ball and shooting it at a rim. Except for a lack of leadership. No box score in the world can paint that picture.
That must be done by those who are on the floor and in the locker room, and Huggins painted it quite well after the Mountaineers were trounced by TCU 98-67 on Tuesday at the Schollmaier Arena.
“We’ve had a culture of having guys who have led us,” Huggins began. “Guys who when someone starts bitching in the locker room, they’ll go, ‘Shut the hell up before I slap you.’ That’s the way it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to have upper classmen who lead in a positive way.”
This team doesn’t have it. Huggins’ team in 2012-13 didn’t have it, either, which explains a lot about how WVU finished 13-19 that season.
The Mountaineers may not reach that total this season. They could, but if those 12 repeatedly wide open 3-pointers hit by the Horned Frogs weren’t the sound of the wheels coming off with this bunch, they’re at least coming loose and starting to wobble.
It is no longer an impossible thought to think that West Virginia could go 0-18 in Big 12 play. Probably won’t happen, but there is at least a hint that it could.
This is where someone like Esa Ahmad is supposed to step up. Someone who has been through it all during his college career
This is where Ahmad is supposed to stand up and say, “Shut the hell up before I slap you,” to anyone who isn’t getting on the right page.
Except he’s too busy getting benched — twice this season already — for basically being one of the guys who refuses to get on the same page.
When’s he’s on the floor, he’s shooting, well. He went 3-of 6 from the floor for eight points and one turnover against TCU in what was one of his stronger games recently.
The problem: That was one of his stronger games recently and not some 26-point performance like TCU got from Desmond Bane against the Mountaineers when the Horned Frogs were facing their own adversity.
TCU played without two starting guards (Jaylen Fisher and RJ Nembhard) and also lost three key reserves at the end of the first semester to transfers. TCU’s bench is as short as Huggins’ patience level at the moment, but instead of crumbling, the Frogs leaned on strong leadership.
Bane was there to pick up the slack. Senior point guard Alex Robinson added a double-double with 14 points and 10 rebounds.
Where it concerns their own teammates, WVU players have no one to lean on. That is not all on Ahmad. The blame can go all around to each older guy on the team — the ones who are playing and the one who is not.
They’re all to blame, because no one took the reins of this team back in October. They just expected things to roll smoothly and for one win to turn into another.
They all just simply listened, when someone should have stepped up and done some talking.
Someone should have been man enough to say, “Shut the hell up before I slap you.”
And now it appears to be way too late to say anything at all.