We had some classic postgame Bob Huggins last night, who again spent close to half of an hour after the game with his defeated team, trying to counsel and console and critique WVU after another damaging double-digit loss.

“Our dreams, our hopes to get to where we weren’t last year, which is the NCAA Tournament, we know time is running out,” Williams said. “We’ve just got to come together as a unit and figure out how to commit ourselves on the defensive end.”

Turns out Huggins was just warming up, because he undid the top button and let loose, just a little bit, after the game.

On the woeful transition defense: “I said on the radio, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, but Kevin Noreen doesn’t run as well as everyone else runs. He’s not as good an athlete. If he can get back, why can’t the rest of them get back? He hasn’t been the problem, not that he hasn’t made mistakes. But if he gets back, why can’t the rest of us get back?”

On doing a decent job early on against Buddy Hield, the team’s leading scorer who started 0-for-7/0-for-6: “I thought for a while we did, and then we have those breakdowns. The truth of the matter is there was one guy who gave up 11 consecutive points. One of our guys. Which probably means I should have got his ass out sooner probably.”

(He didn’t name names, bu you know who it was. And I had someone email me this week, possibly one of you, and ask what Huggins meant by “breakdowns” when he lamented the way his defense would just break down.

“We’ve had breakdowns,” Huggins said. “We have so many young guys in there and we don’t have a rim protector. Honestly, we’re not great defenders on the perimeter. When we’re supposed to trap a ball screen, we don’t trap it. When we’re supposed to string it out, we don’t string it out. When we’re supposed to push up hard, we hedge. We’ve had those kinds of breakdowns that you fix with experience.”

Not guarding in transition and ducking under screens and leaving Hield wide open? Breakdowns.)

On officiating (By the way, I thought the Sooners put hands on Staten and Harris and not only got away with it like no one else, but bothered those two like no one else. They really crowded Harris, which bugs him, and they pressed up on Staten, which is hard for anyone who has to do everything for the offense and then score in traffic.): “I don’t think it’s being called the way it was being called earlier in the year — and I don’t particularly think that’s a bad thing. Before, the freedom of movement thing was enforced very heavily. It’s not being enforced as much now.”

(Seriously, Staten was 2-for-3 at the foul line. WVU was 4-for-10. Oklahoma was 15-for-20. That mattered. And here’s what struck me: The officials — Tom Eades,  Ray Natili and Rod Dixon — are good ones. Eades has seen WVU twice and Natili and Dixon have seen WVU once. But Eades and Dixon worked the first Kansas State game, the only other time I thought Staten and Harris were comparably corralled in a game. And even then, Staten was 6-for-8 and Harris 7-for-8 at the free-throw line.)

On the whispered reality that WVU is really a bad passing team (OK, he wasn’t asked about that, but he’d been hinting at it and referencing assist numbers apart from Juwan Staten until he just put it out there Wednesday): “I head a term the other day I kind of like. Someone said we can’t play sticky ball. We’ve got too many guys who play sticky ball. The ball sticks in their hands. We’re taking about we’re a good team if we stop playing sticky ball. We’re a whole lot better team if we don’t play sticky ball. You can only catch it and pivot like 12 times before it’s a volation. At some point in time, maybe you ought to think about passing it to one of your teammates.”

(Again, he didn’t name names, but you know who he meant.)

None of that includes his rather succinct explanation for the key to the loss — the two quotes that lead the linked-to story — or the fact he said Harris let frustrations get the better of him and Staten let fatigue get to him.

Nothing inflammatory and no flames were thrown, but I thought it was good stuff that got lost on deadline and shoved out of the paper.

Want more good quotes? Scoop & Score starts at 9 a.m. and Pat Beilein brought it. We recorded it Wednesday, which is why he refers to Tuesday’s win as one that happened “yesterday.” And not to brag, but I covered his team for four years and he revealed a few things I didn’t know. I’m pretty happy with this one. Here’s your link to the live show. I’ll post the podcast before I leave here for Pittsburgh, via Dallas. F Double tomorrow.

(Update: Podcast right here.)