It is odd timing to have a week-long break between games right in the middle of February, and whether WVU wanted it or not, whether it’s useful or a hindrance, it was nevertheless earned.

The Mountaineers just played four ranked teams in 10 days and beat two of them. Remember when we were looking at a tricky nine-game stretch in which all of the opponents were or could be ranked? Remember when we wondered if that had ever happened to a team before? And then some of those ranked teams fell off and some of the unranked teams dipped some more?

Well, WVU had never played four ranked teams in a row in regular-season history. So there’s that.

Yet the Mountaineers went “just” 2-2, and I say “just” because I’m sure they feel they ought to have done better. And they’re an ordinary 5-3 in their past eight games. Two of those losses were by double digits, and WVU has only four of those all season. So there’s thought to be given to the idea WVU peaked and wheezed and needs a spell.

That spell is here, and it’s a pivotal moment with five games to go and bubble talk still managing to include the Mountaineers, as well as upcoming opponent Baylor. How a team conducts itself in a dormant period is based on the direction it sets when that static stage begins — and for proof, witness how WVU attacked its challenges in the offseason.

But after Saturday’s loss to Texas, the Mountaineers had some interesting things to say about the calibrations they have to make between Texas and Baylor.

“I think sometime we tend to panic a little bit,” Staten said. “If we’re not really hitting our shots and we find ourselves in a little hole, we think we’ve got to come down and make a home run play every time. Sometimes we dig ourselves in a little deeper. We need to chip away, take it one possession at a time and make sure we get stops and go from there. I think we go for the home run play too much.”

Staten said when WVU does that, it diverts the resources needed to win. With the Big 12’s worst field-goal percentage defense, second-worst defensive rebounding average and second-worst rebounding margin, it has to make the most of those other resources to remain competitive when things are going poorly.

“It’s just a combination of things,” he said. “We need to learn to play through adversity. When things are going great, we tend to get a lot of loose balls, we tend to make a couple more box outs and efforts to get to the ball. When we’re faced with adversity, sometimes we don’t really respond the way we’re supposed to. That’s something Coach is on us about and something I, as a leader, have to stay on us about.”

Understand that a lot of the critiques and characterizations about this team this year have been measured. They were and in parts still are young and green. They’re not where they want to be, and in truth may have arrived earlier than anticipated this season. They play well, but not as well as they want, or as consistently as they want, and they might not even be the team they eventually envision. In all, it’s been hard for them to be to hard on themselves because there are so many factors and even obstacles to consider.

What Staten said was particularly pointed. I hadn’t heard one of them say that before. I’d heard them say they have to play through bad stretches and respond better, and Eron Harris and Bob Huggins more or less reiterated those things Saturday. Harris said WVU has players who need to play better when they’re tired, which is obviously true. Huggins said WVU has to be more resilient, which is also irrefutable.

And both tie into Staten’s point. As much as I and we like to say that WVU is capable of cutting into deficits or staying close — as well as the opposite and giving away leads — there’s this one sort of haunting trait that starts to really matter late in the season when the case gets stronger and harder to ignore.

WVU is 0-7 when it falls behind by 10 points or more in a game. The largest deficit the Mountaineers have erased in a win is seven points against Marshall in December. They’ll be challenged the rest of the way and play some teams that can build leads. Persistence and resilience are good to have, but WVU has to operate better when the going gets tough.