There’s no other way to put it: That was a bad loss, the sort that can keep a team from getting to a No. 2 seed and prevent it from winning the conference championship. West Virginia is now two games back of Kansas and counts a home loss most everyone expects the Jayhawks won’t acquire this season.

So, what happened? A lot.

I’m not going to say this was a coaching issue — to be clear, not a coaching issue — but it sounds like Bob Huggins would like a do-over in a few big spots.

He said he had the wrong people in the game, and I’ll assume he’s upset he didn’t have Sagaba Konate in and standing in front of the rim for the last defensive possession. That was instead Brandon Watkins, who, in his defense, was pinned to the baseline because Oklahoma was driving and scoring or driving and passing. If Watkins steps forward, there’s plenty of time for a pass and a score in vacated space. If Watkins stays back, there’s space for a layup.

That’s more about the defense that didn’t keep the ball out of Jordan Woodard’s hands on the inbound and then didn’t steer him clear of the paint. Those are guard duties. Watkins is a forward. But Konate is a better defender there.

On the final play, Nathan Adrian was supposed to throw the ball into the paint, and Konate, who was in the game after a timeout, was to tip it to the side to Dax Miles. It’s supposed to work like this:

Oklahoma called timeout, and Watkins returned to the game and Konate sat. In the moment, I was surprised it wasn’t Konate or Esa Ahmad, because he can jump and he has huge hands to handle the play that was coming. But that didn’t matter.

Huggins didn’t like Adrian’s pass and doesn’t sound convinced Adrian was ever a good quarterback. And though that’s surely sarcasm, it wasn’t an effective effort. Watkins swatted at and just nicked the pass, which bounced near Miles, and Huggins seemed miffed that it landed a foot away without Miles fielding it. It was close. I bet Miles was surprised it landed where it did.

Mostly, though, Huggins has to be bent out of shape over who he had in the game to miss free throws. Really, the only way WVU can lose that game in overtime with a four-point lead is to do what it did at the line. That was brutal, and that’s two losses now that can be attributed to free-throw shooting. The Mountaineers only have three losses!

The best five players typically include Watkins, Miles, Ahmad and Jevon Carter, and they combined to go 4-for-9 in overtime. (Aside: Looking a little deeper, Watkins made one and missed one, but Carter scored off the miss. Miles then went 1-for-2, but Carter’s putback kinda-sorta made WVU 4-for-4. The killer was when Ahmad went 0-for-2, WVU maintained possession when the ball went out off of the Sooners and Ahmad lost his dribble for a turnover. With a chance to go up three in the final minute, the Mountaineers instead trailed when Oklahoma scored on the other end.) If you can’t use your best players, you’re in trouble. But if your best players can build and cannot defend a 15-point lead, you’re in peril.

WVU had been unbeatable when they led by 10 or more points, and I suspect that was part of their downfall. That first half probably shouldn’t have surprised you too much. The Sooners are all right. I think they’re a good offensive team. They really missed Woodard when he was out sick for four games. That’s really the only way that team loses seven in a row. But the Mountaineers nevertheless played their game and kept hammering away at the stone, hoping that cumulative effect would cause it to break. That’s what they do, and it’s worked pretty well, no?

It happened again, and a 14-0 run built a 66-51 lead. But the Sooners can take a punch — and this was really a couple of punches because timeouts didn’t stop WVU — and how many opponents had answered the Mountaineers this season? One team thought the game was theirs. The other could not have disagreed more.

“We let up,” point guard Jevon Carter said. “We thought since we got a lead that the game was over with. We stopped guarding and started giving up easy shots, and they started coming back and we stopped scoring.”

The Mountaineers gave away a 15-point lead in the final 8:56 of regulation and wasted a splendid effort peppered with marquee moments from Carter in a stunning 89-87 loss to Oklahoma.

WVU was 13-0 this season and had won 30 straight games it led by 10 or more points. An 18-3 run by the Sooners, clutch baskets from point guard Jordan Woodard and WVU’s 4-for-9 debacle at the foul line in overtime were too much to overcome.

“We got up by 15 points, and when we were there we had a couple chances to finish the game, but we kept giving them opportunities,” forward Brandon Watkins said. “Coach says when we play, we can beat anybody. When we don’t play, we can lose to anybody as well. [Wednesday] we lost to a team that, unfortunately for us, wasn’t supposed to win, but they ended up winning.”

I don’t know. I’m not out on the Mountaineers at all. The offense was pretty good for much of the second half before overtime, and Jevon Carter has a new gear, but one bumpy stretch with turnovers really mattered. The defense was sieve, and the press has not been intimidating the past two games, but do you believe the press is finished? Ahmad has played poorly, and that really matters because he’s the leading scorer on a team trained to rely on something significant from him and an interchangeable cast of two or three others. When he’s coming up empty, it’s not easy to find four others. Saturday is a dicey game now, but the Mountaineers are still going to be tough to beat at home against Kansas. They’re a miserable draw in tournament play.

But Wednesday was a bad night with a bad loss, and I bet practice won’t be a lot of fun today and tomorrow. A Saturday night in the Octagon of Doom might be a reprieve.