MORGANTOWN — The opportunities have been there, the most recent a favorable “neutral court” setting against Wake Forest inside the Charleston (W. Va.) Coliseum last Saturday.
The other Charleston – the one located in South Carolina – handed the WVU men’s basketball team chances against Clemson and Xavier.
All three ended up as opportunities missed for the Mountaineers (7-3), who now find themselves between a giant boulder and an ultimatum of sorts when it comes to their current rankings within college basketball’s metrics heading into Tuesday’s 7 p.m. game against Little Rock (Ark.) inside Hope Coliseum.
Those metrics come by the dozens with all types of fancy numbers and names and abbreviations like NET and RPI and, of course, everyone’s favorite, the Ken Pomeroy ratings. The story that each of them are telling right now: WVU has a lot of work to do just to get in bubble contention for the NCAA tournament.
Normally, when the calendar still reads 16 days before Christmas, it’s way too early for anyone to dive into these numbers, but the Mountaineers are in such a tough spot at the moment that it catches the eye.
WVU is ranked 111th in the NET, the main evaluation tool used by the selection committee to select at-large teams for the NCAA tournament. You will find schools such as Lipscomb, California Baptist and Winthrop with a higher rating.
The Mountaineers’ strength of schedule is ranked 300th – out of 365 Division I teams – and that will not likely improve any with a victory against the Trojans (2-7), who are currently ranked 316th in the Pomeroy ratings and 347th in the NET.
WVU’s seven wins have all come against Quad 4 opposition, including its 22-point victory against rival Pitt, which has since gone on to lose home games against Quinnipiac and Hofstra.
Nothing sweet about that, Caroline.
Against anyone on its schedule ranked ahead of WVU in the NET, the Mountaineers have come up short. In nonconference play, only one of those kinds of opponents remain – Saturday’s matchup against Ohio State in Cleveland.
“What you have to be doing in situations like this is learning how you can win these games without playing as well as you would have liked to or shooting the ball as well as you would have liked,” WVU head coach Ross Hodge said last Saturday after the Mountaineers’ 75-66 loss against Wake Forest. “You have to take ownership of it and from a coaching standpoint you have to be willing to take ownership in it yourself. If you are going to ask your players to take ownership of it, you have to take ownership of it yourself.”
WVU’s other two remaining nonconference games – Little Rock and Mississippi Valley State – are in the 300s in the metrics. Mississippi Valley State is ranked last in the country by Pomeroy, meaning WVU will have played the bottom two teams – the other being Coppin State – in the country in those ratings in nonconference play.
So, it is with still 21 games remaining in the regular season the Mountaineers face a win-now-or-else type of ultimatum against teams with a pulse. Finishing in the middle of the pack in Big 12 play – despite the conference currently ranked No. 1 by the metrics – may not be an argument that holds a lot of water come March.
It is a challenge Hodge appears ready to face head on.
“We have to do a better job, have better plans and be able to put people in better positions to execute on both ends of the floor,” he said. “I think it’s more learning and growing than gaining confidence.
“You get into these types of environments against a quality opponent, and you have to learn to beat these types of teams in these environments.”
