Thanks as always to the Big 12.

The conference acted quickly Tuesday and “tsk, tsk’d” the crew that botched the conclusion of Monday night’s national showcase between Kansas and Iowa State.

In a statement, the conference said:

The Big 12 Conference acknowledges that officiating errors were made at the end of regulation during last night’s Kansas at Iowa State men’s basketball game. The plays have been reviewed and appropriate measures will be taken by the Coordinator of Men’s Basketball Officials to adjust the number of future assignments for the two officials involved in conjunction with Conference policies.

The coordinator? Curtis Shaw. Quick Draw, indeed!

So now let’s keep an eye on the whereabouts and the behaviors of Mark Whitehead, Tom O’Neill and Bert Smith. Whitehead hasn’t had a WVU game yet. O’Neill had the WVU v. Purdue game. Smith has had four WVU games, including Saturday’s loss.

One more officiating note: Hope you didn’t miss this from Saturday’s game post.

Among the worst kept secrets about WVU’s worst habits is the increasingly visible trouble passing the ball.

It fills out the swarm of turnovers. The Mountaineers are giving away a quarter of their possessions in Big 12 games and opponents score just short of a quarter of their points in Big 12 games off turnovers. That’s crippling for team that doesn’t shoot or score very well.

Think things might be different this season if those numbers weren’t so alarmingly high? Bob Huggins does.

“Sometimes I think our guys are colorblind,” he said. “We have a tendency to just throw it to the wrong team at times. Live-ball turnovers have killed us. We just have not done a very good job with ball security.”

But this isn’t as much about turnovers as it is passes. Turnovers happen and there are a list of ways to commit them. They’re all preventable, but completing passes is perhaps the easiest way to steer clear of danger.

And that’s WVU’s problem, one that isn’t limited to just giving the other team the ball.

Courtesy, as always, the Big 12.

Absent from this report? The quizzical no-call before — it’s either a charge or a block — and then the wholly stupid foul call at the end of Monday’s otherwise excellent Kansas v. Iowa State game.

Here we are, at the end of a season with a perfectly palatable game with major implications defined by officiating and asking questions of the establishment. There comes a point where you can no longer ignore it. Looks like everyone reached that point in Ames.

Copyright claims on YouTube are tricky, but the above one is something else. In question is the music in the background that’s playing in the weight room below the meeting room — as though I have any control over that. And yes, I’ve disputed the claim.

Still, at issue is that the juxtaposition. It is a pain because the acoustics compromise and overwhelm the press conferences. Weights bouncing off the floor, players grunting and cheering, music blaring and everything else that happens makes for some shoddy audio, though I cannot understand why we can’t get a microphone in there. Ditto every Bob Huggins whisper conference.

But maybe this particular meeting room/weight room problem can be addressed with today’s news.

Tip toes stepped aside for stomping feet Saturday afternoon and Bob Huggins got around to finally detailing his frustrations with his second-year players.

“We can’t run a set because I have guys who have been here – and this is year two – and don’t know what they’re doing,” said Coach Bob Huggins, who recruited the players and vowed to fix it after the season. “It’s totally inexcusable. They don’t have any idea what they’re doing.

“I can’t call a set unless I have certain guys on floor who know what they’re doing. I can’t make substitutions, I can’t run a set because we’re going to have one guy standing somewhere he’s not supposed to stand and screw everything up. I can’t run a set after timeouts. It’s inexcusable, totally inexcusable.”

He went on and Kevin Noreen, in his polite manner, preceded him in a similar tone in his postgame chat. I do think it’s hard to blame this nearly lost season on one thing or one group — but this one makes a lot of sense, in that it encompasses a few things.

That’s stupid fast, and that’s extremely important for Tavon Austin. His 40-time, later “lowered” to 4.34 seconds, proves his straight-ahead speed. Everyone knew he was quick and could dart, much the same as everyone knew he was “fast,” but this puts a label on his speed. Sure, he can angle and cut and weave, but it’s hard to get to the sideline in the NFL. Now we know know he can fly if he has to go forward.

Later adjusted to a 4.59, that was good for Geno, too. I heard form a handful of different NFL and college people Sunday and their opinion was that Geno gave more and better answers with that run and with his workout than he did in his media session — and that went swimmingly, too.

Well, there’s a case of not what was said — though Kevin Noreen said a lot — but how it was said. The exhales and the head nods to allow rather negative observations speak loudly underneath the actually message.

This is the environment, though, inside and around WVU basketball near the end of an uncomfortable season.

Bob Huggins added his two cents Monday on the Big 12 coaches’ teleconference, wondering if the nature of his team’s turnovers is colorblindness and offering that he couldn’t answer why his team cannot shoot, but also plainly stating, again, that the move to the new conference has been just as big a culprit.

“I think it has in a lot of ways. I think the power forwards in the Big 12 are more 3 4s and they are 4 5s, like they are in the Big East. They bounce it a lot better. I think in some instances people run a lot of offense through them, which wasn’t the case (in the Big East). And I think it’s going to take maybe a year for us to figure out the travel situation.”

Ah, the travel.

When the pained words spill from Matt Humphrey’s mouth,  understand he really means them. Losing is all he’s known in college. Humphrey is a fifth-year senior on his third college team and the 121 games he’s been witness to in four seasons have been played 29 games below .500.

“We’re a lot better than what we were, but I’m not going to lie to you: I never saw it coming. I never saw it coming. I’ve always kind of taken a lot of pride in the fact I could get guys to play hard. I could get guys to compete. People didn’t like playing against us because we played so hard and we competed so hard. We tried to rebound the ball. We just did the right things.

“For some reason, I haven’t been able to reach these guys, which is my fault. I should have been able to find a way to reach them.”

— Bob Huggins following Saturday’s 73-57 home loss to Oklahoma State