West Virginia dropped their third straight game on Monday night, this time falling 81-65 on the road to TCU.
WVU interim head coach Josh Eilert spoke on his team and their lack of desperation. Both TCU and WVU entered Monday coming off two losses and he said his team was not desperate enough to win. He also talked about WVU’s season-high 19 turnovers and their offensive flow through RaeQuan Battle as he led WVU with 21 points.
Desperation
“I knew looking into it, coming off two losses, them (TCU) coming off two losses, usually the more desperate tam wins. They played with that sense of desperation tonight and we didn’t. You could tell they wanted it way more than we did and they competed a lot harder than we did at everything they did and that was the difference in the game,” Eilert said.
Turnovers
WVU had 19 turnovers leading to 26 points for the Horned Frogs. 19 was the most they had all season and it forced WVU not to be able to get into a groove on offense.
“They turned up the pressure on us for sure. Like I said, that sense of desperation was all across the floor. They didn’t give us anything easy. Our execution was horrible. They had us turned around,” Eilert said. “We were playing on our heels, trying to dribble through traffic. Typically we tell them not to fight pressure, we fought pressure and we lost in that regard in terms of trying to execute.”
Roster Management
Eilert was asked about his team still trying to come together and mesh as all the pieces are still relatively new.
“It’s been incredibly difficult. You’re managing a lot of different things. First and foremost the chemistry just isn’t there because the guys haven’t played that much together. This isn’t the league to try and build chemistry 20 games in,” Eilert said. “This league is just too strong top to bottom to be able to afford to do that so late. Regardless, we played the last couple games with a full roster and going on the road in this league is incredibly difficult and they wanted it way more than we did tonight and it showed.”
Offense and RaeQuan Battle
WVU’s offense was led by Battle’s 21 points, but it still wasn’t a great offensive showing as WVU shot 39 percent from the field.
“We’re going on too many scoring droughts. We had 11 minutes total within the first 30 minutes we couldn’t get a field goal and those droughts can kill you in this league,” Eilert said.
Battle finished with his 21 points on 7-for-17 shooting, and this was his highest scoring output since he scored 23 against Kansas on Jan. 20.
“You can’t run it through one person. You got to be more dynamic offensively,” Eilert said. “It’s nice to have a scorer like that (Battle) on the floor and you can do a lot of things with him. You got to have a balanced scoring approach to win in this league, it can’t be one-sided whatsoever. To say we run everything through him, it’s not really the way you approach that as a coach.”
