West Virginia played its 34th game Saturday evening, and truth be told, it wasn’t unlike a lot of the ones before it — with one exception. That was the only game the Mountaineers didn’t lead in the second half, which seems minor but also sort of amazing.

When they were good, they were good. When they strayed and didn’t play as hard or as cohesively as they had when they were good, they struggled. There was just enough of the former to neutralize the latter, but even if the margins were smaller, Iowa State played very well, doing what it does and also doing what the Mountaineers do.

Undersized and outscored 34-18 and 40-12 in the paint in two losses to WVU this season, the Cyclones had an 18-14 edge in Saturday’s the first half. They avoided WVU’s pressure defense by outscoring the Mountaineers 11-0 in fast-break points, though WVU certainly helped. All 10 of its first-half turnovers were steals by Iowa State, and many were bad passes or bad decisions by the Mountaineers.

“We turned it over, and you look at the categories that generally we’re very good at — they got 14 second-chance points to our 10. That’s usually in our favor by a bunch,” Huggins said. “Points off turnovers. We got 15, they got 14. We hang our hat on turning people over and rebounding the ball, and we got outrebounded. We’ve got to get more shots. You saw us [for] three days. We don’t shoot the ball very well.”

WVU had more bench points, more points off turnovers and more points from 3-point range. Shot it well, took care of it very well in the second half and didn’t get run out of the building, which seemed plausible at different times. But WVU’s advantages were slight, and Iowa State pulled off massive swings in rebounding, points in the paint and second-chance points from its recent history against WVU.

The Mountaineers weren’t better than the Cyclones, who are on a roll, but the Mountaineers weren’t better than they had been against the Cyclones, either. It’s a game of matchups, and WVU didn’t flaunt the good ones strongly enough — and nothing seemed bigger than the bench points. Iowa State started with the first 18 of the game. WVU scored 22 of the final 25. “We let dudes hurt us who shouldn’t have hurt us,” Tarik Phillip said.

Take away one of the things where Iowa State was better than normal or better than WVU, and maybe it’s a different game.

“They’re good,” Huggins said. “They’ve got a bunch of guys that can handle the ball and a bunch of guys that can shoot the ball. I think everybody says it’s hard to play against us with one day’s prep, but I think it’s really hard to play against them with one day prep as well because they shoot the ball so well.”

And here’s the concern. WVU’s offensive performance was better Saturday than it had been … but we just read this story. The Mountaineers struggle, and along comes Iowa State and WVU does good things and feels good again. There was some sincere hand-wringing after the game about the present vs. potential and the amount of time left in this season. WVU will benefit from playing a new opponents, but Phillip, who’s talking like an All-American this month, wasn’t convinced.

“SFA wasn’t familiar with us, so you can’t really say that,” he said.

It’s funny, but we talked before the game about how a win wouldn’t do much to change WVU’s fortunes — Huggins referenced the old John Calipari story when he was asked about it after the game — but honestly nothing changes about the team with the loss, too. If anything, you’re more convinced about the realities of a team that’s still going to fight like hell to win, to not lose, to make up for bad stretches in the tournament.