College Basketball Week 11: 5 biggest takeaways
By Chris Stone
2. West Virginia’s Big 12 issues aren’t hard to pinpoint
After a pair of defeats last week, the West Virginia Mountaineers have made winning a Big 12 regular season championship a difficult proposition. The Mountaineers now have three league losses through seven games and have yet to play their road matchups with the conference’s top teams, Baylor and Kansas. While the trio of upsets have come by a combined margin of seven points, there are some noticeable issues that suggest a bit of a trend.
On the offensive end, the Mountaineers have turned the ball over on 22.2 percent of their possessions in their three conference losses. In their wins, that number is just 16.6 percent. This issue didn’t rear its head against Oklahoma, but was a big problem against Kansas State on Saturday. Turning the ball over means West Virginia has a tougher time setting its pressing defense, putting them in a less comfortable situation where they have to defend in the halfcourt or transition.
The turnover problems don’t just exist on offense. In their Big 12 losses, the Mountaineers have only created a turnover on 18.3 percent of possessions. With their high pressure style, a failure to create one often leads to easy baskets for the opposing team as reflected by their slightly worse 2-point defense in the above chart.
West Virginia is obviously a good team and it’s not too hard to attribute these losses — given their combined margin — to a lot of bad luck, but when the Mountaineers are losing the turnover battle, it puts them in a precarious position that deserves our scrutiny.