MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — You throw a pebble into a stream of water and nothing really happens.
But then you throw in another and another one and eventually you’ve built yourself a dam.
That’s what happened to sixth-ranked West Virginia on Tuesday during its 94-89 overtime loss against No. 3 Baylor at the WVU Coliseum.
Just substitute careless mistakes for pebbles and eventually they added up.
No one was any more bigger than the other, but, man, they were all just silly.
Taz Sherman is a senior, someone who should know when you’re permitted and not permitted to run along the baseline on an inbounds play.
In the final seconds of the first half, he ran along the baseline to try and get the ball in and it was a turnover — one of 16 the Mountaineers had on the day.
Baylor’s Jared Butler capitalized with a 3-pointer at the buzzer to give the Bears a 35-31 lead at the break.
Mark Vital had five offensive rebounds — it seemed like it was closer to 15 — and all five generally led to something good for the Bears.
Emmitt Matthews Jr. simply didn’t catch a pass and it led to Matthew Mayer saving the ball before it went out of bounds and it led to Davion Mitchell getting a one-on-none layup.
WVU was forced to burn a timeout to start the second half, because Deuce McBride had no one to throw the ball to, because his other four teammates were running up the floor.
“When you’re playing against some of the top teams in the nation, every possession matters,” said McBride, who finished with 19 points and eight assists. “If you give a great team another possession and another possession, it’s just going to add up and they’re going to take advantage of it at some point.”
The dam was building as the game wore on and it turned into, “Damn, WVU just gave that one away.”
We could keep going.
Sherman had the ball stolen away from him by Vital with 37 seconds left in overtime, because he dribbled into traffic and then just kept the ball in front of him for Vital to reach out and grab it.
WVU trailed, 90-89, but Adam Flagler was immediately fouled and it quickly became a 92-89 Baylor lead.
Jalen Bridges had an opportunity to push the ball in transition, but instead threw it back to Sherman.
The pass was behind Sherman and it bounced off his shoulder and out of bounds.
“I thought that was critical,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said.
McBride went 1 for 2 at the foul line with 13.6 seconds left. Rather than forcing Baylor to take a 3-pointer at the end of regulation, Butler was able to simply drive it to the rim to tie the game and send it to overtime.
“The reality is we haven’t — down the stretch — we haven’t made free throws,” Huggins said. “We didn’t make them against Oklahoma. We didn’t make them against Texas. They made theirs, but we didn’t make ours.”
Truth is, every WVU player mentioned above had great moments, too.
Sherman was a scoring machine (26 points) and hit just about every shot imaginable.
McBride had one of his best overall games and also had four rebounds and a crucial blocked shot of Butler late in regulation.
Bridges, too, had a tremendous defensive block of Vital with 21 seconds left in regulation that preserved an 80-79 WVU lead and he added 12 points, seven rebounds and one fantastic 3-pointer as the shot clock was expiring with 2:09 left in overtime.
But, the dam could not be stopped.
WVU had an opportunity to win the game in regulation.
With the ball with 1.8 seconds left, the play from the sideline was to throw the ball near the rim for Derek Culver, but the pass never even went in Culver’s direction.
“It was supposed to be the same play we ran against Oklahoma where Derek got some looks at the rim,” Huggins said. “We didn’t even look at him.”
In the end, it was one hell of a game, like two heavyweights slugging it out in the final round of a championship fight.
Yet, this one could have had a much different ending for a lot of different reasons.
Catch the ball. Know the rules, simple stuff.
“Pressure does a lot of different things to different people,” Huggins said.
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