… in that it’s Feedback from what happened Friday.

Funny, but just about everything we talked about as possible keys turned out to be real keys. It was eerie. Dayton’s depth, defensive energy, rebounding and record in close games were prominent, but two things were overlooked.

1) Chris Wright is really good. NBA athletic with an ability to get to the rim. He missed a bunch of games last year and Dayton sunk. He was there this year and the Flyers soared. That wasn’t a coincidence.

2) Dayton could better handle its offensive woes. Really, that was a decisive factor. WVU struggled in the games in which is couldn’t score. Dayton won those games … well, except Sunday, but don’t think the Mountaineers were going to beat Kansas.

Onto the animous Feedback!

Alli said:

Well, it looks like we know why Huggs has lost 10 of his last 13 first round games. We were vastly under prepared for this team. We have no clue how to finish close games. We couldn’t adapt. Dayton just kicked our butts. Period.

Is this what we get to look forward to every year?

If by under-prepared you mean not at all ready to play, OK. If you mean not ready for how to play, not OK. This team knew what was coming. Huggins spent timeouts lecturing and reminding players. That’s not all on him. The inability to complete comebacks and close out games was what separated this team from good and very good. As for what you can look forward to, how about NCAA appearances every year and a chance to make a legitimate run every couple of years. That can happen. Here. Now.

jtmountaineer said:

I don’t understand how our team could hustle so well for rebounds and second chance points all year only to fall flat here. Fayton won this game as much as we lost it, but geez did we blow some opportunities. If what Huggins told Mike & Mike this week was true, that coaches don’t have as much of an effect on games at this point in the season, then he exonerated himself in advance for this terrible, terrible disappointment. I did not see this coming. Did anyone else? 

Yes and no. That type of performance just wasn’t their calling card this season. That said, they looked … off … Thursday. Players and Huggins confessed to bad practices That wasn’t a constant trait, either. But come on, credit Dayton. Something similar could have happened to the Flyers…and it didn’t. I found it interesting that in his press conference Thursday Huggins said: “Well, you’d hope now after we played what (34) games, that our guys kind of take scouting reports to heart. When you get freshmen they sit there and act like they are listening, but they’re really not. And you tell them, ‘This guy is going to do this,’ and then he comes out the first three times and he does it, and you take them out of the game and they are looking at you like, ‘What did I do wrong?'” I circled that.  

Sam Wilkinson said:

There was no excuse for overconfidence, which is what we played with. Ridiculous.

None. Ruoff said WVU expected to win “with ease.” Where did that team adopt that attitude?

mountiefan3 said:

Ruoff said it…We thought we could just come in and win…over confidence, YES! I watched the whole game and from the beginning they showed no hustle or passion, just like a team that thought it could win because they were the higher seed and played in the Big East.

There is no reason to be concerned about Huggins and his tournament resume. I ‘ll take Huggs and going to the dance every year. 

I’m looking at my text messages. At 3:27, which was probably the under-16 media timeout, I responded to a text simply wondering “What the (heck) is going on?” with “They’re in big trouble.” You could just tell. And yes, I use proper punctuation in texts.

p.i. reed said:

i preface this by saying that alex ruoff had a great career at west virginia and surpassed all expectations for a kid coming out of a dinky high school in an area of florida known more for manatees than basketball … but he really came up smaller than any senior in recent memory in games that really mattered. and i give him a pass on poor shooting. but the third and fourth fouls in succession? where the mental focus?

Great point. I was totally shocked and disappointed by his fourth foul 45 feet from the basket when he had neither chance nor need to make a play there. I’ll echo all the positives about the guy, but for the longest time he distinguished himself by playing well when he played bad. He’ll be remembered in large part, though, for Louisville II and Dayton. That’s what we do, of course. We remember the crash and burn and not the rise from the ashes.

Karl said:

I’m neither surprised, nor particularly disapointed in yesterday’s result. A lot of the experts on TV told the nation to look out for WVU as a potential spoiler, but I advised any friends who asked not to take WVU any further than a game in their brackets.

In such an unpredictable sport, WVU was an unusually known quantity. They beat bad and mediocre teams almost without fail. They lost to very good teams (and they played many) almost without fail. There were the Pitt and Nova wins, but overall, they were 3-8 against the RPI top 50, 20-3 against teams 51+. That’s remarkably consistent.

You have to be satisfied with this team’s season as a whole. They overachieved. They were a team with serious fundamental holes, yet they won 20 games and finished in the top half of one of the greatest conferences ever assembled. Not bad.

They did this with a 6-7 center whose signature skill was fouling people. They did this without a natural power forward, or any tall starters. They were no longer good at shooting the 3. They were very young and suffered a major setback by losing their veteran point guard early in the season.

They had had the least-skilled senior leader in recent memory. Alex Ruoff was not clutch. He made a lot of fouls that were not characteristic of the kind of wise veteran people made him out to be. He got burned defensively by good Big East players. He alone cost WVU games. But it never stopped him from criticizing his teammates for “not playing hard.” As if this team cruised through the Big East because it was so much more talented than everybody else.

If I were on that team, and he ran his mouth like that after another 3-14 shooting day, I’d be tempted to knuckle up with him in the Colosseum parking lot. (And if one of us caught a black eye, I’d say we were racing to the car and slipped on a patch of ice.)

I have very high hopes for the future. This will soon become the team of a senior DaSean Butler, more experienced and muscled-up versions of Devin Ebanks and Kevin Jones. We’ve got promising recruits coming in to fill glaring holes. The real Huggins era is just beginning. Top 10 rankings, high seeds in the NCAA tournament, NBA draft picks, contending for Big East titles.

Get ready.  

Fair. Actually, very good. I want to add two things, though. I think Ruoff was a pretty good defensive player. I think Wellington Smith’s past two years come with an asterisk because he hasn’t been able to play his natural style — but he hasn’t appreciably adapted to what’s been asked; it’s a tricky evaluation. I also think WVU had no idea how fast and athletic and frenetic Dayton was until the game was several minutes old.

Dave said:

I don’t agree with throwing Ruoff under the bus, but yes, he pressed in the biggest games and became somewhat of a hinderance toward the end of the year when he was turning the ball over, and over, and fouling, and turning it over. Since the UC game, he seems to be more frustrating than anything else (although he did have some moments).

Butler never seemed the same after the Villanova game. Bryant was inconsistent.

Overall, I thought that they blew a few they should have won, but maybe that is necessary in the process of development. I hope that the incoming guys can help next year and that Proby can provide more help.

Although I hate that Ruoff ended his senior year the way that he did, he was important to the program and should be commended. The future is bright and part of that is because of guys like him, as well as those who may not be around next year (so they can make scholarship offers to others).

One thing that I do hope for is that nobody falls short in the areas of academics or has legal problems in the off season.

Whatever happened to Ruoff, whether it’s what’s said here or elsewhere — and in any case, it wasn’t characteristic — was surprising. He just wasn’t himself toward the end and deserved a less cruel conclusion. As for Butler, I ask you to remember the 2005 home run derby. Bobby Abreu, a high-average doubles hitter and on-base machine, hit 41 home runs in the contest. He hit .260 with six home runs after the All-Star game with an OPS almost 200 points lower than where it was in the first half. Check out Butler post 43-points against Villanova, when, you’ll remember, he wasn’t very happy with how he played. Finally, very quietly Truck closed the season pretty well and handled the postseason pressure rather nicely — good minutes, scoring and shooting, great assist-turnover ratio.

Sam Wilkinson said:

I don’t want to just lay this on the players – Huggins went into the game with one plan, and like apparently all WVU coaches, was completely unable to come up with a different plan when the first one was struggling. It was a very, very bad coaching job. At some point, Huggins’ first round exits will show poorly on him, rather than his players. The rush to blame players, and exonerate Huggins, is completely inexplicable.

He can’t be exonerated, for sure, because the team shouldn’t have taken the floor the way it did. Especially a team that enjoyed how tough it was and took offense to the way it was treated by others. Some of that, though, is out of his control. He changed up, too. Went to the 1-3-1, but it didn’t work. Started calling plays rather than rely on motion, but that didn’t work, either. Went to Ebanks and Truck rather than Ruoff and Butler, and that kind of worked. Had WVU ever called a timeout and then immediately set up Truck for a 3? And it worked! It’s fine to say a team should come in with a number of alternatives, but if the strengths aren’t working, what’s to say the new stuff will? It’s a better gamble to hope the kinks get worked out with what’s familiar rather than roll the dice with something new. Remember, too, they weren’t getting blown out and for a few spots in the second half were one play away from drawing even or taking the lead.

Jeff said:

This is not on Huggins. Their two leaders and upperclassmen had off nights. They don’t have a lot of depth and the depth they do have are mostly role players that bring nothing (Throughman) or almost nothing (Flowers) offensively. Better days are ahead. Ebanks, Bryant, Jones, Butler, Smith, Mazzula and the incoming recruits will put WVU on par with the talent at the other top Big East schools.

Ruoff’s departure will be much more manageable than Alexander, Nichols and Mazzula.  

This is what I have a hard time grasping: Why the outrage? Really, was this all that surprising? It wasn’t a team equipped to make a great postseason surge. What it accomplished this season was very, very good. Impressive, even. But it had two scorers who could be minimized and a third scorer who got his stuff on rebounds, transition, free throws and improv. It had a point guard you that was up and down throughout the season. It had two bench players who didn’t score and third who used to score and lost it at the worst time. It had three freshmen. It had perhaps its best leader in street clothes for the final 28 games. It had some issues and it still won 23 games. The end was deflating, sure, but it followed a script.

jtmountaineer said:

Just to clarify, Huggins got to the Sweet 16 in spite of Beileins team. Without Huggins insistence on athleticism and effort over ostensible luck, players like Joe Alexander would have continued to founder, and the same can be said of this year’s team. We were at our best when we stopped relying on 3-point shooting. It’s nice when they fall and all that, but Huggins’ game plan of insisting we play hard defense and rebound was what kept us in games against 3 of the tournament’s #1 seeds. Dayton out-defended and out-rebounded us. No amount of coaching during a game, no amount of altering plans or schemes, makes players outplay their opponents.  

I would agree with that and say Dayton out-WVUed this WVU team. The Flyers played a better game, which included limiting the Mountaineers and their game, and won. 

Alli said:

>No amount of coaching during a game, no amount of altering plans or schemes, makes players outplay their opponents.

I agree with that. However, mental preparation is just as important as physical preparation. Emotionally and mentally, this team was all over the place this season. I do not believe this team was prepared mentally for this game. Now can we put all the blame on Huggins for that? No, of course not. Both of our leaders (Butler and Ruoff) are very emotional guys. They let the course of the game get to them if it’s not going their way. However, assuming coaches have no influence on mental prep is just as silly. When you have an extremely volatile and emotional coach, you better expect your players to respond the same way. What we need in the future is a tough go-to player who stays cool under pressure. We need a Pat White in high-tops. Could that guy be Ebanks? Maybe, but we’re going to need more offensive weapons than just him if we want to finish further in the dance in the future.

I sat near the bench and I can tell you the players and coaches there were shouting out what Dayton would run and what the individual players would do and it always turned out that way. And I’m pretty sure the coaches told the players to box out in preparation for the game. What stood out to me was in the locker room the players were completely disappointed in themselves because they knew what to do and when it mattered most they didn’t do it. And yes, Ebanks can definitely be that guy. I just wonder if people understand how good he was this season and if they can grasp how good he can be.

StraightOuttaNorthCentral said:

I don’t know… I get that everyone says he needs another year of college for seasoning and getting bigger/stronger, but you could have said the same thing for Kevin Durant, and he’s turned out pretty good. If I were a pro scout, I’d see things in E’s game that would have me pretty excited, and if I were the GM of an NBA team that definitely isn’t going anywhere in the next season or two, I might be inclined to take him, if he were available in the draft, and let him get that seasoning and strength in the NBA. He’s just not a long-term “project” — he’s a very good, very smart player with very high upside who is a bit on the thin side.

That said, I think he’s so smart that he recognizes that if he comes out now, he’s probably outside the lottery, whereas another good year in the Big East under Huggins increases his stock considerably. He’s coming back, unless something crazy happens in the next few weeks.

That’s pretty sharp. The kid absolutely did not disappoint. I was thinking it’s a pretty weak draft, but I saw 16 players who definitely would/should go ahead of him today. Put him in a gym for workouts and he might crack the lottery. Here’s what’s weird about him, though. WVU runs no offense through Ebanks. None. I’m not kidding. How does anyone know what he’s capable of at this stage? Maybe that’s incentive to come back, just so he can put up numbers (and make money) as an actual part of an offense, but maybe the potential is too appetizing. I spoke with a couple people over the weekend and two comparisons I got were Hakim Warrick and Darius Rice. Yikes. Quite a gap there. He’s too much of a guard for Warrick and too much of a post for Rice. The Durant thing isn’t fair because Durant is a once-a-generation talent, but I could maybe buy something for Durant’s NBA teammate, former Georgetown star Jeff Green.

Enjoy the week!