MORGANTOWN — West Virginia’s second-half meltdowns may have reached another level Wednesday night in its 84-81 loss against Iowa State.
WVU led 54-42 with 14:19 remaining, and while the Cyclones chipped away, the Mountaineers still led 77-73 with 2:40 left.
What happened the rest of the way was another disaster. WVU didn’t score a point in the final 87 seconds, going 0 for 4 from the field while also committing a turnover on an inbounds play with 22.6 seconds left that may haunt these players for quite some time.
Before breaking down the final seconds against Iowa State, the overall numbers are alarming as to just how much WVU (14-14, 3-12 Big 12) has been outplayed in the second half this season.
In the 14 losses, the Mountaineers have held a lead at halftime in just five of the games.
With that said, WVU is still just a minus (-14) in scoring over the first 20 minutes, or basically trailing by an average of one point per game.
The second half is a much different story. In the 14 losses, the Mountaineers are a minus (-144), an average of getting outscored in the second half by 10.3 points per game.
Iowa State outscored WVU in the second half by 13, 53-40, with 25 of those 53 coming from guard Izaiah Brockington, which is where our breakdown begins.
Huggins was asked if Brockington’s second-half shooting had more to do with the Cyclones’ victory than the mistakes WVU made in the final minutes of the game.
“If you noticed, they went after the same guy every time,” WVU head coach Huggins replied. “We were in man and then we tried to play match-up, and they went at him every time in match-up. As I continue to tell our guys, ‘They watch film, too.’ They know who guards and who doesn’t guard.”
The question that wasn’t asked: Well, why wasn’t that player taken out of the game?
That answer becomes clear when you look at who guarded Brockington for much of the second half, which was WVU guards Taz Sherman and Sean McNeil.
If Huggins is referring to one of them, then the reason they are still in the game is for their offense, as they are WVU’s top two scorers for the season.
Huggins added that he tried to schematically avoid having Brockington matched up with that player, but Iowa State still managed to get what they wanted.
“We try to avoid that match-up every game,” Huggins said.
As for the final turnover, in which Brockington stole Sherman’s inbounds pass and shot it in to give Iowa State an 82-81 lead, it was surrounded by confusion.
This is where Kedrian Johnson’s hip injury that kept him out of the game may have come into play.
With Johnson out — he is generally the player Huggins likes to inbound the ball — Huggins instead had to give that responsibility to Sherman.
With 25 seconds left, Sherman inbounded the ball to McNeil in the corner, a bad spot to be in, because it allowed Cyclones defenders to trap McNeil, and Sherman called WVU’s final timeout to retain the possession.
During that timeout, Huggins said he drew up the same play two times as a measure to make sure he made everyone’s roles as clear as possible.
Huggins’ plan, knowing Iowa State was playing man-to-man for the length of the court, was to get all of Iowa State’s defenders bunched up around the foul line, set a screen, and then have someone run deep and Sherman would throw the long bomb.
Here is where the confusion happened.
“It would have unquestionably worked,” Huggins said. “They had five guys inside the foul line. It would have unquestionably worked.”
Except replays of the moment showed Iowa State didn’t have all five guys around the rim.
Instead, Cyclones guard Caleb Grill is standing near midcourt guarding WVU forward Gabe Osabuohien. If any WVU player had made a break to go deep, Grill may have been able to tip or intercept the pass.
The problem here, Huggins said, was Osabuohien wasn’t supposed to just stand at halfcourt on the play. He may have been the one who was supposed to haul in the long pass, although that wasn’t exactly clear.
“He shouldn’t have had his guy standing there when he was told repeatedly to set a screen or fake a screen and run to the other end,” Huggins said.
In any case, the play never developed. Jalen Bridges ran toward Sherman and it looked like Malik Curry sort of tried to set a screen for him, but Bridges never got much room to operate.
Bridges slid across the lane trying to keep Brockington off of him, but when Sherman tried to hit Bridges with the pass, Brockington reached across Bridges’ body and tipped it, picked it up and scored the winning basket.
“We didn’t execute coming out of the timeout,” Curry said. “To sum it up, (Huggins) said in the locker room that everybody did their own thing on that play. We just turned it over. You can’t blame (Sherman). It was everybody on the floor’s fault.”
It was just the latest example of bad things happening to WVU in the second half and Huggins, during his postgame radio interview, said he’s seen enough of it.
“They never did anything I asked them to do,” he said. “I’ve tried to cover for guys and cover for guys and cover for guys. I’m telling you, I’m about tired of it.
“How hard is it to go set a screen and run? That’s all you had to do. I ran it for years. My guys before were afraid to not do what I asked them to do, because they knew I’d never play them again. It’s ridiculous. It’s totally ridiculous. Twenty-two, 23-year old guys can’t do the right thing.”
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