West Virginia fell 77-63 on Wednesday night to No. 15 Oklahoma.
The Mountaineers held a lead in the first half, but that went away towards the closing minutes of the first half and the Sooners never looked back. West Virginia interim head coach Josh Eilert spoke on his teams’ offense, which took a long time to get going by OU’s three-quarter-court pressure. He also added that he didn’t feel his defense was up to par and that the travel day on Tuesday had an effect.
Offense
Eilert said when they put the Sooners in ball screens, that his team did not handle them well.
“Forcing things. We weren’t taking what they were giving us. We talk a lot, especially in ball screen coverage of getting that [ball] out of there and not letting that ball stick. And we should be able to punish people on the back side if we can get that ball movement. We never got that ball movement all night,” Eilert said.
Early in the first half, WVU had multiple transition opportunities. Three of them included a missed dunk by RaeQuan Battle, a quick three which missed by Kerr Kriisa, and then a turnover in transition as well.
“I told these guys in there, this league is just too hard defensively not to score easy points. We got to find a way to score easy points whether it be second chance points or fast break points. We did not convert early in the first half in transition. We had some real good opportunities to do so. We didn’t convert.”
Defense and Travel
Eilert said his team defense was’t there like it was against Texas this past Saturday. He said they lacked connection and that the travel madness had an impact on how they played.
“We were pretty connected defensively against Texas and I didn’t feel that connection today. It’s a shame. We had to do a lot of what we needed to get done today in shoot around and kind of had to labor them a little bit harder than we typically do because we didn’t get a chance to practice yesterday with our travel woes. Took us nearly 10 hours to get here. It’s not an excuse but it’s something that comes into play in this league sometimes,” Eilert said.
He then added that he felt like because of the longer and more intense shoot around, that his team wasn’t fully into it during the game.
“I felt like our guys’ minds and bodies weren’t quite into it today. It’s a fast twitched game, and if your legs aren’t there you can tell when you’re a step slow to the ball and we were certainly a step slow to the ball it seemed like on every possession it was a 50-50 chance of securing an extra possession.”
