MORGANTOWN - Bob Huggins was in a sour mood Tuesday night. He was defeated on the floor and beginning to sound defeated off of it. He's right to be bent out of shape about both.
Losing at Texas Tech will yank West Virginia out of the top 10. The Mountaineers (12-2, 1-1 Big 12) were No. 7 when they arrived in Lubbock, Texas, and they lost in overtime after the last of a series of defining errors. They chose to forget the reminders about the opponent and ignore the instructions in the huddle. They surrounded a drive and left a shooter open, and Anthony Livingston made that matter.
"The scouting report is you don't let Livingston stand still and shoot the ball," Huggins said. "You've got to make him shoot it off the bounce. At the worst possible time, we let him step into one, and at a time when 2 won't beat us, a 3 beat us."
Huggins said he's "incredibly frustrated" with his players. He's tired of pleading with them to move the ball to their teammates and not between their legs. His patience thins a little every day as he asks players to be here instead of there and to do this instead of that in the press.
Good teams have bad nights, though, and WVU's still a good team that nearly won, that erased a six-point deficit with 2:58 left in regulation, that guarded Livingston's reputation properly in the final 30 seconds before overtime. Yet the press was below par, ball security was shaky and free-throw shooting was again costly and has now figured into both losses.
Then a bad night got worse. The game started at 9:20 p.m. After 45 minutes on the floor and 2 hours, 33 minutes on the clock against a rugged and veteran opponent and before a crowd of 10,013, the Mountaineers bused to the airport, boarded a plane that took them to West Virginia, bused from Clarksburg to Morgantown and then headed to their homes.
Huggins knew his players would be unlocking their doors after 5 a.m., and for the third time in five days, he decried it.
"The league's been great," he said. "This is not."
This is the fourth straight year the Big 12 has allowed WVU to start conference play with back-to-back road games. It's supposed to be a gift because the Mountaineers can stay on the road the entire time. It cuts an entire there-and-back trip out of the season-long itinerary, and players - excuse me, student-athletes - aren't going to miss classes because the spring semester has not yet started.
The first three times the Big 12 did this, WVU played two games in three days. This year, the conference scheduled games on Friday and Tuesday. Huggins wouldn't stay on the road between games, so the Mountaineers flew Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday.
Asked Tuesday night what the team needed to do to get ready for Saturday's home game against TCU, familiar foe Jamie Dixon and the first-year coach's fearless players that nearly beat Kansas, Huggins growled that the Mountaineers would try to sleep.
After Friday's win at Oklahoma State, he was similarly grumpy when asked if he was heading home or to Texas Tech.
"We can't stay out here that long," said Huggins, who first mentioned this topic the day before the Big 12 opener. "The deal is they're supposed to be helping us. That's not helping us.
"I can't have them laying around out here and then go to Lubbock and then have them lay around there. If they lay around, they get - they have no energy. We've got to keep them active."
WVU was well-rested for the Red Raiders. They were home at a fair hour Friday night and had all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday to prepare in a rhythm. But Wednesday was wrinkled, and it was something the Big 12 could have prevented and should know how to handle by now.
Yet the reality is the Mountaineers better get a handle on their schedule and their complaints, because this is not the end. WVU has 9 p.m. road games at Iowa State, Oklahoma and, of course, Kansas. Those happen in a 14-day Tuesday-Wednesday-Monday stretch that covers five games, and Huggins knows the key to winning the Big 12 is to beat the Jayhawks on their court. Do three 9 p.m. starts hinder that?
The most trying part of what remains is the finish. WVU plays Saturday-Monday games in three straight weeks. It plays host to Kansas State and travels for the late game against Kansas, plays home games against Texas Tech and Texas and plays at TCU and at Baylor. That's two of the nation's top three teams (No. 2 Baylor and No. 3 Kansas), two teams that almost beat Kansas (TCU and Kansas State) and the team that just beat WVU (Texas Tech) all in a row at the end of the schedule.
There is one benefit, though it is minimal at best. The final game is at home on a Friday night against Iowa State. The rest of the Big 12 wraps up a day later, and WVU could have five days off before opening the Big 12 tournament. Perhaps by then the cumulative effect of the press will be restored and trump the cumulative effect of the schedule.
Contact Mike Casazza at 304-319-1142 or mikec@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @mikecasazza and read his blog at http://blogs.wvgazettemail.com/wvu/.