B.Y.O.S. (Bring your own Swindoll)

No. 1, No. 2, Texas. One of those things is not like the others, and I do believe that had something to do with what happened last night at the Coliseum. I’m not sure the Longhorns are better than the Mountaineers, but they were better than the Mountaineers last night — and remember, they hit the floor like 35 minutes before the game started. WVU had a smoother set of circumstances and was never on the right road. Never had it.

But regular seasons hit lulls. There are 31 games, and while we marvel at the physical abilities and capabilities, we can lose sight of the mental necessities and how vital that part of competition is. It’s just hard to stay on the top shelf all season, and when you play with and require the level of intensity the Mountaineers flex, sometimes it’s just not going to be there. When things are coming easy and there’s praise with every dribble, it’s harder to access those things, oftentimes because you just think they’re with you.

Obviously, that’s not the case, and the verdict last night was that that’s a lesson learned.

I’ll be honest with you: I was some combination of surprised and impressed that WVU went 3-0 at Virginia Tech, at Kansas State and at TCU. Seven days on the road, no distractions, all basketball and three opponents who want your hide make for a rough stretch.

This past week wasn’t dissimilar, except that the opposition was far better. (Texas is a tested team this season, and it looks so much better than it did at the start of the month. Remember, this team beat Washington, UNC and Stanford before it lost to Texas Tech and TCU, and those losses preceded this three-game winning streak that includes wins at Iowa State and WVU … and Oklahoma State, which destroyed Kansas Tuesday.)

There were obvious and heavy emotions involved in the Kansas and Oklahoma games, and the “We’re as good as anyone!” line after Oklahoma was perhaps an omen. Really, check Bob Huggins last night (woe) and after Oklahoma (restrained praise) and wonder if he wondered. So WVU goes 1-1, thumps that aforementioned line/mantra and then jumps to No. 6 after stating it was never rated as highly as it should have been, and it might have been the most false footing the team could find.

So the Mountaineers slipped, and certainly Huggins knows more than I do, but I do wonder if he’s intentionally arresting, overstated even, because he does not want this to happen again and he wants his team to see it coming as he did and learn to avoid it. Huggins hates the idea you learn from losses because he doesn’t see the need to lose to learn. To me, it felt like Huggins wanted his team to regret seeing and ignoring the warning signs and then the problems and paying in the form of a loss — and three teams above WVU had already lost, so focus shouldn’t have been an issue.

Plus, it can’t always come from the head coach. Sometimes the players need to figure it out on their own, and when your coach puts your team on blast and breaks out Chuck Swindoll in the locker room and after the game, just knowing people are going to ask and write about it later, a lot of the incentive is then with the players.

Teams have to find news ways to do the same things and avoid the big mistakes. Some are shrewd enough to hit the blinker, check the mirrors and blind spots and change lanes without incident. Some are fortunate enough to to swerve at the last second and avoid a wreck. Some crash, but some can continue on and some need to be towed.

What bugged Huggins is he saw this coming. He, of course, was worried about Javan Felix, and appropriately so, but the coach had to shut down practice Tuesday because it was pointless. So with all do respect to the senior guard with a knack for nagging WVU …

“It wasn’t that,” Huggins said. “You can’t start the game 1 for 9 from the free-throw line. You can’t shoot wide-open shots — we shot three or four wide-open shots in the first half that didn’t hit the rim. They were wide left. That’s hard.

“I could go out there, and I’m an old man, 62 years old and I swear to you I could go out there and shoot 1,000 shots if my shoulder would hold up and I’m never going to miss one 2 feet to the left. And there wasn’t anyone around them. It wasn’t like they got pressured into it.”

The Mountaineers were 8-0 at home and leading the country with a plus-33.1 scoring margin on their court. They shot 31.1 percent and missed 18 of 21 3-point attempts and 15 of 23 free-throw attempts.

They’ve lost both games after beating top-ranked Kansas here last week and lost two days after being ranked higher than they have been since reaching the same spot in the final poll of the 2010 regular season.

“Success sometimes is hard for people to handle,” Huggins said.

There are two plays that stood out to me. One is the first Texas possession after the Daxter Miles 3-pointer tied the score. Texas confused WVU on a ball screen. (Kind of fun to watch, actually, as big Connor Lammert feigns a screen, but ends up floating to the top and a guard screens Devin Williams to let big Shaq Cleare come to the perimeter to screen.) But since Lammert can shoot 3s, that causes trouble up top, and no one fills the lane when Williams steps forward to squeeze the dribbler. That left Cleare — he’s 290, by the way — uncovered in the paint. Watch Devin’s reaction … and this was after a timeout.

The second sort of illustrates what WVU did not have and how Texas took advantage — it’s the Prince Ibeh alley-oop. WVU missed a shot and Williams and Miles offer a token trap on the baseline. The ball makes it out and over to Felix as Jaysean Paige sidles over. Felix takes one dribble and one-hands a pass across the floor to Isaiah Taylor. Texas has a 3-on-2, and WVU’s Jevon Carter and Jon Holton are marooned. Taylor dribbles at Carter to draw him in, but he’s tossing this to Ibeh from the moment he catches the pass from Felix. Holton had no chance to defend this on the fly.

How many times have you seen WVU do something with that trap? How often is a defender either anticipating the pass out of the trap or there when the player gets it? How frequently does WVU discourage or defend a (vertical) cross-court pass? What teams run three-pass press-breakers that need seven seconds and end with a one-handed jam?

One too many, it turns out.