Huggins Hints at Shaking Things Up with Lineup/Roster

At some point, you can expect changes to be made.

Another game, another missed opportunity for the Mountaineers as they fell to the TCU Horned Frogs 77-67 on Monday night. With just four games remaining in the regular season, opportunities are becoming limited for this team to figure things out and turn it around.

With the loss, WVU has now dropped 11 of its last 12 games, falling to 14-13 on the season and 3-11 in Big 12 Conference play. 

Coming into the game, TCU as a team shot 43% on the year. They shot nearly 54% on Monday night. Much of that had to do with the several easy looks they were getting at the basket. In the last two games, the Mountaineers have been out-rebounded 91-56 and outscored in the paint 80-40. 

"I don't remember getting out-rebounded 42-24. Ever. Not at Walsh College. Not at Akron. Not at Cincinnati. Not at K-State. I don't ever remember getting pummeled that bad," Huggins said. "I told them in there, I've never had guys get run by the way we had guys get run by. They've been told and told and told and we've worked on it. I mean, we do 20 minutes of individual defense every single day. Stay in front of your man. It's hard to score over a guy. Stay in front of your man. We've got guys that who are just as bad now as they were the day they walked in."

Not only do the Mountaineer have issues on the inside, but the ball distribution on the offensive end is not in great shape either. WVU actually shot the ball extremely well in the first half (54%), but that dipped to 34% in the second half. Huggins has constantly complained for much of the season that this team, for whatever reason, doesn't run offense. A big part of that is passing the ball. 

"We made some shots. Taz made some shots, made some hard shots. Keddy did a good job of moving without the ball. Fellas, it's hard if you're trying to do the right thing and you're back cutting and you're open and you don't get the ball and then you back cut again and you don't get the ball. Then you're curling and you don't get the ball. All of a sudden, you starting looking around like, is this dude ever going to pass the ball? That we've got to fix. We're going to watch some film tonight. It's hard to say that wasn't me when you're up there on the film."

As he has already mentioned a few times in the past week or two, Huggins foreshadowed that some changes are on the way. Whether it's who is in the starting lineup, who is getting minutes off the bench, or perhaps, who is on the team period. 

"The positive thing is, we've still got a chance. I'm going to go back and look at the game and the guys who didn't give us what we expect for them to give us are going to sit their butt over on the bench and watch the guys who do compete. If they open their mouth on the bench, I'm going to send them home.

"I guess as a player, I didn't appreciate playing with guys that didn't care. I never tolerated having guys around that didn't care. Sometimes, there's tremendous good in addition by subtraction. You know, you don't want to do that. You try to give everybody a fair shot, a fair break. Sometimes it comes down to let's do this like they do in the real world.

"I'm wondering if we don't have some guys that don't really want to be here. We're not getting the leadership that we need to get. We really need to find out who wants to finish this year and who doesn't. I think we'll be way, way better off with the guys that want to finish if indeed there is some guys who are tired of playing.

"I'm going to continue to fight the fight until we don't have any fight left. And it may not be with some of the guys on that stat sheet now. Maybe we're starting the wrong guys. Maybe we've got some guys that shouldn't be playing at all. The freshmen haven't been playing, we put the freshmen in and Seth [Wilson] has proven he can play. Jamel [King] came in and made a shot and I thought defensively, he wasn't great but he wasn't bad. I think maybe we're playing the wrong people."

You can follow us for future coverage by liking us on Facebook & following us Twitter:

Facebook - @WVUonSI

Twitter - @SI_WVU and Schuyler Callihan at @Callihan_.