High up on the list of offseason necessities is a pretty obvious item: WVU needs skill.

All the grit and tenacity and defense and rebounding, the Bob Huggins staples that returned the Mountaineers to this stage, the elemental keys that will start off slimmer next season without seniors Jaysean Paige and Jon Holton, need an accomplice.

WVU, which has had fits of offensive vertigo these past two seasons, had season-low marks for shooting percentage and made baskets last night. Honestly, to understand how bad the Mountaineers were is to understand Stephen F. Austin won while shooting 30.9 percent and missing 16 of 23 3-point attempts.

But it’s not merely about shooting or making layups, though this team needs shooting and finishing. WVU’s consistent issues with simple possession — moving and distributing the basketball, giving away myriad passes and bobbles and dribbles and guffaws — must be cured after deteriorating to epidemic status against the Lumberjacks.

Q. Bob, you’ve talked about those turnovers from day one of this season. You’ve sort of explained a little bit, but can you expand upon it? Why has this team had so much trouble with turnovers?

BOB HUGGINS: We can’t pass. But we haven’t been able to pass all year. We’ve start the game and we have guys pinned and we throw it arms high. We had a guy open on an out-of-bounds play and we threw the ball right in their hands. I think — you know, I’m starting to think anyways that, when we spend a lot of time trying to teach guys how to pass, I think sometimes you better go recruit some guys that can pass because I’m not sure that it’s something — it’s kind of like shooting. If you’re a bad shooter, you can become a little better, but you’re never really going to be a good shooter. I think, if you’re a bad passer, you can get better, but you’re never going to be a good passer. It’s a skill thing.

We’ve done it all year. This isn’t a new deal for us. It’s just we’ve made up for it in other ways that we didn’t make up for either. We didn’t make a shot today either. We didn’t make free throws. If you wrote down how to lose a game, you could probably check off just about everything that you wrote down, and that’s not taking anything away from Stephen F. Austin. I love Brad to death, and Brad’s done a great job with that bunch, and they played their butts off. But you could probably make a list and check it off and say, yeah, they did all those things.