Watching WVU’s basketball team — and then hearing the pain
A glutton for punishment, I watched West Virginia University’s entire men’s basketball game Monday night.
In case you’re not such a glutton, TCU defeated the Mountaineers 81-65 in Fort Worth.
It was ugly for WVU, which turned the ball over 19 times.
And if it can be so, the previous game was even more ugly. Texas got revenge on the Mountaineers with a 94-58 beatdown in Austin.
WVU has lost five of six and, for all intents and purposes, the regular season at 8-16 and 3-8 in Big 12 play. The only hope is to win on Tuesday, March 12, in the league tournament. And then Wednesday. And then Thursday. Then Friday. Then Saturday.
So, yeah.
If wondering, West Virginia’s scoring offense is No. 310 nationally as of Feb. 13, 2024, with an average of 67.9 points after 24 games. (There are only 351 teams listed in the NCAA stats.) In scoring defense, the Mountaineers are No. 238, allowing an average of 74 points. Not a good combination of stats.
Of course, if you follow WVU hoops in the least you know the hand coach Josh Eilert was dealt. A former assistant, he should be set for life with his 10-month $1.5 million contract, but when handing that out athletic director Wren Bakert said, “It’s going to be a hard job and we recognize that.”
As a resident glutton for punishment though, I wondered what was said after back-to-back drubbings. My posts on X Monday night included the team has been “hard to watch” and the Mountaineers looked “defeated mentally” after going down by 22.
So I dove into Eilert’s postgame press conference. His voice was low. The presser was short — three minutes and 16 seconds to be exact.
“When I prepped for this game, I knew coming off two losses and (TCU) coming off two losses that usually the more desperate team wins,” he said. “They played with that sense of desperation tonight and we didn’t. You could tell they wanted it way more than we did. They competed a lot harder than we did in everything they did. That was the difference in the game.
We went on too many scoring droughts.”
If you watched the video, you could just feel Eilert’s pain.
“They turned up the pressure on us for sure,” he said. “Their sense of desperation was all across the floor. They didn’t give us anything easy. Our execution was horrible. They had us turned around, playing on our heels, trying to dribble through traffic. Typically, we tell them not to fight pressure. We fought pressure and we lost in that regard, trying to execute.”
The hope for Eilert had to be to bring the team – with some players making very nice NIL money – together and show improvement this season for a shot at the WVU gig full-time.
“It’s been incredibly difficult when you’re managing a lot of different things,” Eilert said. “First and foremost the chemistry just isn’t there because the guys haven’t played that much together and this isn’t the league to try and build chemistry 20 games in. This league is just too strong top to bottom to be able to afford to do that so late.”
He paused.
“Regardless, we played the last couple of games with a full roster. Going on the road in this league is incredibly difficult. (TCU) wanted it way more tonight than we did and it showed.”
A reporter asked about running the offense through either RaeQuan Battle or Jesse Edwards (I couldn’t make it out, but it doesn’t matter.)
“You can’t run through one person,” Eilert said. “You got to be more dynamic offensively. It’s nice to have a scorer like that on the floor and you can do a lot of things, but you have to have a more balanced approach to win in this league.”
Indeed, aside from surprising wins over Texas and then-No. 3 Kansas, the season has gone south for WVU – with No. 12 Baylor up next this Saturday. There are seven regular season games left, which means a losing season even if WVU runs the table before tournament play.
My sense at the end of the TCU game was the Mountaineers let down, let go of the proverbial rope.
Here’s hoping they show pride the rest of the way, pick the rope – and their heads — back up and lessen the pain.
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Mitch Vingle covered sports in West Virginia for 38 years. Follow Mitch on Twitter at @MitchVingle and be sure to check out the rest of Wheelhouse Creative’s website for your marketing and advertising needs. If interested, call us at 304-905-6005.
