West Virginia can’t shoot its way past Texas with turnovers scarce
No one can be counted on in college basketball this season. Very little seems to be going as it is supposed to. Inconsistency reigns. The sense of surprise is being dulled because surprises come in rapid fire succession like inappropriate comments from Donald Trump.
Almost any team in the nation could be used as an example to back up the point, but No. 6 West Virginia is about as good a place to start considering its recent stretch and the outcomes produced, including a 56-49 loss to unranked Texas at home on Wednesday. 
[Chaos is the only certainty in college basketball this season]
The Mountaineers celebrated a triumph over No. 1 Kansas a week ago on their home floor. They followed that effort by narrowly missing an upset of No. 2 Oklahoma, losing by two points on the road in Norman, Okla., and then returned home to face a Texas team that has been the model of inconsistency.
In other seasons, more predictable seasons, seasons that made sense, the Mountaineers would have handled their business and dispatched the Longhorns. But not this year. Instead, the Mountaineers proved incapable at times of putting the ball in the basket and lost in what was easily their worst offensive performance of the season.
It was the 20th time since Jan. 1 that a team ranked in the top-10 in the Associated Press poll lost and the 14th time one of those teams lost to an unranked opponent.
The Mountaineers came into the game ranked 13th in the nation in scoring at 84.2 points per game. Much of their offense generally comes from forcing turnovers from opponents and scoring in transition.So Texas deserves credit for taking care of the ball and forcing West Virginia to score in ways it doesn’t usually have to rely on.
With Texas committing only eight turnovers, ultimately it was a game decided by a poor shooting performance from West Virginia. A dreadful shooting performance from long range.
Consider that West Virginia had 24 offensive rebounds, badly outrebounded Texas and had only 11 turnovers. The Mountaineers attempted 20 more shots than Texas but shot only 31 percent and made only 3 of 21 attempts behind the arc.
[Texas A&M cements itself as SEC favorite by defeating LSU]
West Virginia couldn’t make shots when there weren’t hands in faces. The Mountaineers went 8-for-23 at the free throw line.
It’s almost inconceivable that the same team barely missed beating the top two ranked teams in the nation in its two most recent games. But those kinds of drastic shifts in performance seem to be occurring more often this season, in part, because coaches are finding ways to get opponents out of their comfort zones.
This three-game stretch for Texas with wins over Iowa State, Oklahoma State and West Virginia is easily its best stretch of the season. Perhaps the Longhorns are finally adjusting to Shaka Smart and his Havoc system.
– – – – – – –
[Kyle Ringo is the assistant editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KyleRingo
