After a strong start to conference play, Arizona handed West Virginia their first conference loss of the season Tuesday evening. Fifth-year guard Toby Okani felt the blame was solely on the players themselves.
“I just think we weren’t as locked in as we usually are,” Okani said. “They (coaches) had us ready.”.
The two teams met early in the year during a non-conference matchup in which the Mountaineers took home the win in overtime. In this meeting, Arizona managed to put up better stats and bring the win back to Tucson. The Wildcats’ field goal percentage of 50.8% was significantly higher than the Mountaineers’ 36.2%. Arizona led for over 34 minutes of the game.
West Virginia was also without fifth-year guard Jayden Stone, who has not played this year, freshman guard KJ Tenner, and senior guard Tucker DeVries. To the Mountaineers, “next man up” is always their mentality.
“Everyone is prepared. We practice like everyone is a starter,” Okani said. “We just have to play a little bit harder because our margin for error is small,” he added.
Okani said he hopes to learn from his mistakes and the team will take practice back to the drawing board to prepare for their next game.
“We are going to go back to the team we used to be in the game before,” Okani said.
The Mountaineers hope to hit the road for a Sunday afternoon game this weekend against Colorado with a fresh mindset.
