COMMENTARY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Maybe this is on us, collectively. And how could anyone who watched West Virginia play basketball last season be blamed?
When the Mountaineers shot out of the gates playing quality team basketball in November and December — particularly coming off the heels of a difficult football season — excitement was a natural reaction for WVU fans. It became easy to buy in to what this team was capable of accomplishing.
That excitement reached its peak right before New Years, when the Mountaineers beat No. 2 Ohio State in Cleveland to improve to 11-1. Comparisons to the 2010 Final Four team did not seem outlandish — indeed, Bob Huggins dropped the occasional morsel noting the areas in which this year’s team is actually better.
But with the conference race now more than halfway run, reality is setting in. As it turns out, Ohio State was far from the nation’s second-best team. And the same is turning out to be true of West Virginia.
Folks are right to be excited about the Mountaineers, but perhaps they’ve picked the wrong season for the expectations.
So often, a deep March run depends on quality point guard play. As was laid bare for the world to see on Wednesday night against No. 3 Kansas — or at least the portion of the world that subscribes to ESPN-Plus — West Virginia does not have the horses for such a haul. WVU’s point guards are still colts.
Coming out of the media timeout with 7:52 remaining in the game, Kansas junior guard Marcus Garrett sized up Jordan McCabe and Miles McBride as fresh meat.
“I knew I wasn’t in foul trouble, so I was able to show off my quick hands and get my hands on a couple balls,” Garrett said.
With 6:56 left, Garrett picked McCabe’s pocket with both teams settled in the half-court. The next possession, he swiped the ball from McBride. A minute later, he wrested one away from another freshman, Oscar Tshiebwe.
With 4:34 left, Garrett took a slight break, allowing Isaiah Moss to pick off a McCabe pass. But he was back at it 16 seconds later, picking off a Brandon Knapper pass as an increasingly desperate Bob Huggins looked for a backcourt combination that could keep the ball in West Virginia’s possession.
The three Mountaineers who played point guard against Kansas — McBride, McCabe and Knapper — finished with a combined eight turnovers and zero assists.
At some point, the road to the Final Four runs through a team like the Jayhawks. And if that point comes, it seems difficult to fathom that the Mountaineers will be able to overcome who they are — the 53rd-youngest team in the country.
“I don’t know what to say, whether it’s we’re not mature enough, we’re not experienced enough, we aren’t tough enough to grind out games like this,” Huggins said following Tuesday’s 58-49 loss to the Jayhawks. “We have an average of 1.2 years of experience on our team, which is a whole lot lower if you take into account that [senior] Logan [Routt] really doesn’t play…
“That’s not an excuse, it’s a fact. I would hope that as they mature and get better and go through the grind, that they would respond and get tougher, be more active, guard better, pass better.”
Unfortunately, getting run through the grinder seems to be the only thing that will get McCabe and McBride where the Mountaineers need to be. West Virginia could probably work around their flaws if the team could shoot worth a hoot, but it cannot.
It’s too late to expect this team to do anything from three-point range. The Mountaineers are every bit the 30-percent shooting team from outside that they appear to be, ranking 311th in the country and falling.
That adds pressure on the point guards to create, and against teams that have defenders like Garrett, you get what you saw Tuesday night.
“They haven’t played, man,” Huggins said. “Jordan played a little bit at the end of last year. Knap played a little bit at the end. Knap’s not really a point guard, he’s more of a scoring guy. Deuce really wasn’t a point guard [in high school].
“We’re inexperienced.”
For what it’s worth, no one knows that better than McBride and McCabe themselves.
An hour after the game ended, they stood at opposite ends of the Coliseum floor, firing shot after shot. It wasn’t to impress anyone. It was to get better.
Inevitably, that improvement is going to come with that work ethic. The question is whether it can happen quickly enough for this season to be special, or if West Virginia fans’ excitement will have to be put on hold for one more year.