He’s doing an awful lot for WVU. Really, try to find a player more valuable to a team than Jones. There may be competitors. There may even be someone who is superior in that regard. I just wonder if any player’s performance is as critically attached to the outcome as is Jones’ with the Mountaineers.

Try and follow me here: When he’s going good, so is WVU and so are his teammates. When WVU struggles, he still usually solid and good for 20 and 10, but it is what his teammates don’t do to facilitate that often eludes victory. Bob Huggins thinks similarly …

“I asked our guys, all the guys who think they’re so good, ‘Let me ask you something? Where would we be without No. 5?’ Think what our record would be without him,” Huggins said. “He’s been the MVP in the country. Playing with all the freshmen who can’t pass him the ball – who don’t pass him the ball – the numbers he gets? That’s pretty good when we can’t pass him the ball.”

So now you’re at a significant point of the season. He’s still chugging along. He’s never played eight games like these past eight, and when you’re talking about eight games in January, you’re talking about a guy playing superbly for a month and literally growing out of being a very good player and into being a great player. It’s not a streak so much as it is evolution.

And yet WVU is 4-4 with three straight losses. The Mountaineers return to practice tomorrow after two days off and two days to think about what has happened and what happens next. Jones isn’t sleeping and you can safely assume those restless hours are spent thinking.

So is Kevin Jones doing too much, not enough or just what he has to do? He’d like to know, too.

“I don’t know whether it’s a thing where I have to do more or maybe it’s something I’m not doing,” Jones said. “I’m confused. Maybe I’ll use the time off to think about what I need to do.”

Jones is shooting 53.9 percent this season, but his percentages the past three losses have been 47.6, 44.4 and 43.8 percent.

He has taken 55 shots in the losses, matching his most in a three-game stretch this season – and the other three-game run included two overtime games.

Jones was 10-for-20 from 3-point range in five games before the losing streak. He was 0-for-5 against Pitt and is 2-for-12 in the losing streak,

“He took a couple quick 3s he shouldn’t have taken, but what am I supposed to say to him with everything he’s done?” Huggins said. “I know he’s trying to win. I have no doubt he’s trying to win. I think the biggest mistake he can make is to try to do more.”