We’ve seen Truck Bryant have some bad games and some bad stretches of games as a freshman, as a sophomore and now as a junior. The one that he — depending on how you look at it — ended or took a break from Saturday is the freshest in our minds, but it’s been the hardest to watch and the hardest to understand.

On Jan. 1, Truck hit for a career-high 25 points on 9-for-18 shooting, including 4-for-6 from 3-point range at Marquette. Damn game. Props you up, only to sweep the leg. In the next 13 games, he was 25-for-106/10-for-47. He had just four double-digit scoring games in there, but never one with more than 12 points. In all four, he had to make some free throws to get out of single figures.  

I can’t tell you a time I went to the Coliseum for interviews or for a game and didn’t see Truck out there working, either by himself or with the strength and conditioning coach, Andy Kettler.

And just to really jerk with him and his emotions, Truck usually started the game off right. In the 13 games, he was 6-for-13 on his first shot and 5-for-10 from 3-point range. In the past five games, when the slump took in a life of its own, he was 4-for-5/3-for-4.

On the rest of the shots in those five games, though, he was 3-for-29.

Imagine that. Your confidence is quickly inflated and then gradually deflated by a slow leak over 40 minutes, again and again.

No matter what he did, he couldn’t get out of it, and he was doing a lot to deal with his problems in basketball, but also in life. Quietly, he was sidetracked by some sort of a personal issue his cousin was going through. Truck won’t anything else about that, but admits it was an issue.

“It was real serious, but stuff happens like that sometimes,” he said. “It was definitely on my mind a lot. He’s someone who helps me a lot. It’s all fine now, but I still think about it a lot.”

The brain might as well be five Hasheem Thabeets lining up against you. It can interfere and alter just about anything, even the things that the most veteran players are conditioned to handle.

Bryant became a lot like a lot of his peers. More often than not, players are bothered because they’re bothered.

The concern for his cousin and the struggles with shooting were getting to him. No matter how long Bryant was in a gym, no matter how many shots he made before he left, he couldn’t get right.

What was once second nature became a five-alarm problem.

“That’s the hardest part,” he said. “That’s the reason why I was struggling. I’d make shots before practice and when I was warming up for the game, I’d get extra shots up in the gym, and nothing.”

The first half Saturday against Notre Dame was an awful extension of the rut. He was 0-for-4 and it seemed like the crowd was fed up with it. Twice he made one of his seemingly desperate drives to the basket and got nothing out of it. He missed a 3-pointer amid audible groans from the crowd.

A little later, Kevin Jones grabbed a valuable offensive rebound of his own miss and handed it to Truck and while everyone figured he’d wait for his teammates to scurry back to the offensive end, he hoisted and missed a long jumper.

And then, when you absolutely did not expect it, he was unstoppable in the second half — 20 points on 5-for-7/4-for-6 shooting.

What’s it mean? It means he had a good game, and one with no turnovers. “I didn’t have any assists either. That about tuined my day,” he said.

Does it mean he’s in the clear? Certainly not. As a freshman, he was scoreless against Marquette, scored 22 points against Marshall and was scoreless against USF.  He was playing OK last year as WVU followed that UConn loss and answered Bob Huggins’ “Be special” challenge with wins against Cincinnati and Connecticut. He scored 14 points and was scoreless twice in the next six games — and then broke his foot in the NCAA Tournament.

Figure he had to learn somewhere in the past — and if not, than in this rut — that these slumps can come back just as quickly as they appear … or disappear.

“I’ve got to keep working on it,” he said. “That’s an everyday thing with me. The one thing I want to do now is get up a lot of shots for repetition, so I can keep this going.”