West Virginia interim head coach Josh Eilert was understandably disappointed from his team after their 94-90 loss to Kansas State. Eilert talked about his feelings on the loss as well as touching on some officiating as well as WVU’s consistency.
Eilert sat down with Tony Caridi on WVU’s radio broadcast after the game.
Disappointment
“I questioned them and I really got after them at halftime. I talked about in the press conference, we can’t dig ourselves a hole like that. Their guys were just backing us down, backing us down, getting a two-footer. We weren’t getting a hand up on shooters, and getting to shooters and we couldn’t get a rebound. Nothing was going right,” Eilert said.
WVU trailed by as many as 25, but were able to come back and take a lead late in the game.
“We had to throw our game plan out pretty quick there in the first half. I challenged them and they responded in the second half and give them all the credit in the world for giving me that effort. It’s disappointing, very disappointing to come in here and be that close. You’re one bounce away or one call away, a timely call in any 10-15 different situations. And we had so many looks right at the rim too that we left on the table. Really hurts when you go back and look at it.”
Officiating
Eilert briefly talked about officiating and where he felt there were multiple opportunities for the Mountaineers to get calls that were not given.
“Couldn’t get a whistle. I feel like that’s going to be a recurring theme. I feel like anytime you play a team on the bubble in this league, I feel like we’re not going to get the whistle we deserve,” Eilert said. “I’m not going to point at that, but we got to understand there’s so many opportunities we left on the table. Credit to our guys for fighting, battling, giving us everything they got until the bitter end.”
Searching for Consistency
Eilert said his group wasn’t playing well pregame or in shootaround, and that his message to the team is they show they can play at a high level, they just have to do it for longer periods of time.
“We just got to get to the point we’re consistent. We get that consistent effort from the jump. Yeah, teams are going to go on some runs and it’s going to go one way or another, but we got to be able to understand when we can stop the bleeding.,” Eilert said. “That effort wasn’t there. I felt like the energy and effort wasn’t there in shootaround and it carried over into the game. It took too long to turn the tables in that regard.”
