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Jon Holton aggravated his left shoulder — I say aggravated because he’s had KT tape on the shoulder all year — against Texas Tech, and Bob Huggins admitted he “got a little bit scared” when Holton walked off the floor, past the bench and to the locker room.
He surely had the same feeling in the second half when Holton rolled his left ankle, limped off the floor, past the bench and to he locker room and did not return to the game.
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— Big 12 Conference (@Big12Conference) March 6, 2016
Honestly? I don’t have a problem with that. That’s not my first team. That’s not who I think are the Big 12’s best five players. If it was up to me to rank the league’s top 15 players, which I may or may not have done yesterday afternoon, I’d have 13 of those 15.
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Four days before Athletic Director Shane Lyons told the Gazette-Mail coordinators could sign multi-year contracts and position-only coaches would work on one-year pacts, West Virginia granted receivers coach Lonnie Galloway an extension that allows him to begin this season working on a two-year deal.
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There isn’t one formula to use to win, because players and coaches and officials — which is to say “games” — vary too much from moment to moment, never mind from one day or week or month to the next. But WVU’s got a pretty solid thing going: Fifteen straight wins when it builds a 10-point lead and a 22-1 record in such games this season. (The exception: Virginia in the Jimmy V Classic, and if we’re being honest, the savvy Cavaliers were better built to come back at that point of the season than light-green WVU was to protect that 12-point cushion. Today? Different story, for sure.)
Ten points can come and go quickly with the 3-point shot as well as the shorter shot clock and strict officiating, but WVU makes it work.
It’s not easy to come back from 10 or 12 or 15 or however many points down and just get even again, and then a team that gets even has to get ahead and stay ahead. Comebacks often fall flat because the team with the lead is guilty of taking breaks and the team rallying hits the gas. When the two intersect, one is slowing down and another can shift back to that good gear.
But it’s another thing altogether to play catchup against WVU’s 94-by-50 defense, rebounding and general relentlessness. The Mountaineers were 21-2 when they held a double-digit lead last season.
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So it’s pretty simple now. If WVU wins or if Oklahoma loses, WVU finishes alone in second place, gets the first-day bye in the Big 12 tournament Wednesday and plays a day later against the Texas Tech-TCU winner. If the Mountaineers lose and the Sooners win, WVU finishes tied for second place with Oklahoma, which is still a good line on a postseason resume, and gets the first-day bye, but the Mountaineers also finish as the No. 3 seed and play the No. 6, which would be Iowa State.
(What a weird day for the Cyclones. First, they finish at Kansas. That’s fun. But if they win and if WVU and TCU win, they’re the No. 3. If they win and WVU and Oklahoma win, they’re the No. 4. But if they win and if Baylor wins, they’re the No. 6.)
But Williams is in an odd place right now, and Gathers is in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time. Williams’ shooting slipped from November to December and from December to January, but it did go up about 10 points in February. Yet probably no one is tickled with his numbers, never mind the Big 12-best 13 double-doubles, because he has a hard time finishing.
Why, though, is an interesting topic, and it could be related to the fact he’s not shooting free throws as well or as often as he was before.
“He absorbs more contact,” Bob Huggins said. “People bounce off him. Honestly, I don’t think he gets the calls other people get because people bounce off of him. They foul him and bounce off and it doesn’t look like he got fouled, I guess. It looks like he gets fouled to me. I would be an exceptional official.”
Rico ain’t bouncing off Devin, and vice versa.
But we also have the matter of Devin’s absence from the starting lineup, and possibly also study hall, during the week. That’s not a longterm issue, I don’t think, and though Williams was in at the end of a 22-point win Saturday, Huggins saw a purpose and then a payoff when Richard Romeo scored.
“Dev and Rich are real close,” Huggins said. “I saw Dev running around and trying to get him open, which is kind of neat. Dev’s got no points for himself, and he’s running around and trying to get Rich some baskets.”
Williams didn’t speak with the media after the game, and that’s likely part of his punishment, but Huggins said there were no side effects.
“I think other guys were scoring and he was fine with it,” he said. “He was happy after the game. We needed that win. He wasn’t pouting or sulking. He was happy for the other guys.”
Williams missed two free throws late in the game after starting 0-for-5 but did make a baskets. He’s never been scoreless in his 97 games, and though he’ll probably start and score today, he has to play big, if only so that the Mountaineers can continue to come together around their centrepiece.
“I think it’s real important,” said Huggins. “He was great (in Thursday’s practice), so I think he’ll have a good game.”
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I had some great dumplings last night. Spinach, tofu and goat cheese, and the server was eager to recommend them on account of the goat cheese, because it was new to restaurant. I was talking to my wife later, who always wonders what it is I do when I’m on the road. I explained. “We need to make these dumplings.”
Dana Holgorsen hung out with an astronaut Saturday who was new to Earth. Scott Kelly was in space for 340 days and only got back Thursday … and he’s hanging out in Houston with WVU’s football coach two days later? I have so many questions, and you don’t know me very well if you don’t think I’m asking all of them. This is so much better than Slim Thug.
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As you know, WVU is either the No. 2 or the No. 3 seed in next week’s Big 12 tournament. The 10th-ranked Mountaineers, who have never been better than a No. 5 in the event and haven’t won a conference tournament game since winning the 2010 Big East tournament, don’t have much to fret. A win secures the No. 2, and a loss with an Oklahoma win delivers the No. 3. The Sooners are the No. 2 if they win and WVU loses. The Mountaineers are No. 2 if they and Oklahoma both lose.
The No. 2 plays the winner of the 7-10 Texas Tech-TCU game. WVU’s two biggest margins of victory in Big 12 play are (at home) against TCU and Texas Tech, respectively.
The No. 3 is where things are murky, but I’ve got you covered — and you might like to know a 3-6 against Texas isn’t all too likely. In fact, WVU as the No. 3 is more likely to face Iowa State.
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West Virginia welcomed the media to a luncheon today, complete with new concession offerings, and unveiled detailed plans and renderings for upcoming renovations at the Coliseum. Construction begins soon and will roll out in two phases. The first should be complete in time for the start of the 2016-17 basketball season. The second will start a year or so from now and be done before the 2017-18 season begins.
As you can see, the major initiatives accommodate fans, giving them more concession points and rest rooms as a way to make the crowded concourse areas easier to navigate. But WVU’s Olympic sports are in for a treat, too, with a new weight room and athletic training room, a redesign of the Shell Building and even modern and functional fixes to the tennis courts.
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By now we can agree that very little happens according to plan for WVU. Sometimes the shots don’t fall or the press doesn’t work as designed or an opponent plays an unexpected zone. A starter might have an off night and an opponent, usually one who does not start, jumps up to play and to remain well above his averages. Bob Huggins will change his starting lineup because of an injury, a suspension or some other means of discipline, and the Mountaineers have to adjust.
Wednesday night was one of those rare games in which things pretty much followed the script. WVU took 27 more shots than Texas Tech, had a plus-10 turnover margin (against a team averaging 11.6 turnovers) and a plus-17 rebounding margin as well as 39 bench points, and all of that led to winning disparities in second-chance points, points off turnovers and bench scoring. Pretty much everybody had a good game, Richard Romeo included.
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You are looking live the signature sequence from last year’s WVU v. Texas Tech game here at the Coliseum. It escalated quickly. What you may or may not know is that these two teams have played some weird and wild games against one another since the Mountaineers joined the Big 12. (Actually, even before that, because the Sweet Sixteen game in 2005 was fantastic.)
Begin in 2013. WVU led at home 61-53 with 3:19 left and survived when a buzzer-beater 3-pointer fell short. That was WVU’s last win that season, one that ended when Dejan Kravic’s tip-in just before the buzzer fell and knocked the Mountaineers out of the Big 12 tournament.
The 2014 game in Lubbock was nuts — Juwan Staten got a technical … from John Higgins — and WVU wasted an 11-point lead only to force overtime and then avoid a second on the strength of made and missed 3s. The encore in Morgantown was an odd classic, featuring Dusty Hannah’s lip and his 3s.
Last year’s game in Lubbock was mostly uneventful, but the game here was tense and produced the above mele. When the two got together in Lubbock in January, Texas Tech’s Aaron Ross and WVU’s Elijah Macon danced and picked up technicals, and a fan scurried down the aisles to berate Watkins during the postgame handshake. Preceding that was Tarik Phillip’s invincibility star and eight points in the final 70 seconds to steal the win.
Tonight’s game is going to be intense because of who’s playing and because of what’s at stake. Texas Tech believes it should have won the first matchup and knows it can still get to 10 Big 12 wins. It had nine the previous two years. WVU could secure no worse than the No. 3 seed in next week’s conference tournament with a win and can be the No. 2 with a win tonight and Saturday at Baylor.
The Red Raiders are not a pushover, not a team WVU can look at and say, “Never lost to those guys in a regular-season game. Loose on the laces tonight, fellas.” Texas Tech was 3-7 in the Big 12 at one point, but ripped off five straight wins and beat ranked Iowa State, Baylor and Oklahoma in order by three, 18 and three points at home, on the road and at home. That’s not easy.
What makes this even more commendable is that this is happening without Norense Odiase, who was doing some really nice work before breaking his foot against TCU. He hasn’t played since, which means barring a Big 12 tournament matchup — which is not impossible — Odiase will not play the Mountaineers and his good buddy Brandon Watkins.
That said, I did talk to Odiase about the incident and his team’s relationship with the Mountaineers.
