COMMENTARY
West Virginia is not just a poor three-point shooting team. It is a terrible three-point shooting team.
This is not news, as the Mountaineers sit 335th nationally with a 28.9 three-point percentage. So it is understandable that Bob Huggins would not design his offense around the concept of making threes. To do so would be folly.
Yet even with that being common knowledge, Huggins’ refusal to have West Virginia let it launch in the face of a three-score deficit late in the second half of Monday night’s 67-57 loss at Texas remains puzzling.
On the rare occasion that a West Virginia shooter finds himself on a hot streak this season, Huggins should feel an obligation to feed that player until the wave finally hits the beach.
He had such a player on Monday night.
Sean McNeil was a perfect 3-for-3 from three-point range in the first half… and then never took another for the rest of the game, even with the Mountaineers needing to make up ground quickly. That’s half as many threes as McNeil took at TCU, when he didn’t make any of them.
Huggins’ postgame explanation did not hold water.
“We couldn’t get a good one off,” Huggins said in his postgame radio interview. “When they press up on you and you can’t drive it by them, what are you going to do? We ran stuff that we’ve always gotten shots off of. We didn’t do a very good job screening.”
He probably isn’t lying about the quality of screens. But even if shooters were provided with perfect screens, the Mountaineers frequently didn’t have the right personnel on the floor to take advantage of the situation.
Taz Sherman, far and away this team’s best outside shooting threat, did not play for the final 15:20. Sherman was pulled for the final sin of committing a double-dribble just a couple minutes after he drove into the lane for an ill-advised underhand layup attempt that hit the bottom of the rim. It was one of just two shots for Sherman in the game.
Sherman should be shooting, not driving, and maybe that was Huggins’ message here. But it also isn’t surprising that a scorer would get out of his element when the team’s point guards can’t be reliably counted on to penetrate and kick back out to the shooters.
With Sherman out, Huggins at least recognized McNeil needed to be on the floor in his place. But absolutely nothing was set up for him, defying any rational explanation.
McNeil took a total of two shots in the second half, both on the same possession. After missing a jumper, he alertly followed the shot, cutting to the hoop for Jermaine Haley to hit him with a beautiful bounce pass after grabbing the offensive rebound.
Then for the last 10:04 of the game, West Virginia’s hottest shooter in Austin got nothing.
Inexplicable, and given the score, inexcusable.
Neither McNeil nor Sherman were on the floor for the final 4:04 as Huggins went with what looked to be a more defensive lineup in an attempt to press Texas.
Perhaps the right idea, but with a major Achilles heel — there wasn’t anyone on the floor capable of making shots that would allow the Mountaineers to actually set up the press. And whatever defensive advantage the lineup of Chase Harler, Jermaine Haley, Emmitt Matthews, Gabe Osabuohien and Derek Culver had to offer was forfeited on the possession where West Virginia allowed two offensive rebounds just before the shot clock expired before Texas finally scored to go up 61-52.
West Virginia never got within seven points of the lead, only attempting two three-pointers down the stretch.
One of them was put up by Emmitt Matthews, who is shooting 19 percent from three-point range in Big 12 play. The other was heaved up by Jermaine Haley with 47 seconds left as West Virginia faced a 10-point deficit.
Following the game, Huggins shared the same complaint that he did following West Virginia’s loss to Oklahoma that began the Mountaineers’ current tailspin.
“We’re not the same team,” Huggins lamented. “Different dudes, man. They’re not the same guys.”
Maybe so.
But for a team that has struggled shooting the ball like West Virginia has, Huggins seemingly could have done more to make sure the right dudes were on the court and had the ball in their hands, ready to fire.