Rapid Takeaways Following West Virginia’s Loss to Wake Forest

West Virginia dropped to 7-3 on the season following a 75-66 loss to Wake Forest in Charleston.

Here are a few of my initial thoughts from this one.

Sloppy first half offense

I don’t know what’s worse, the 12 turnovers or the 4/18 mark from three-point range, with most of those attempts not coming off a paint touch. Brenen Lorient had four turnovers himself, one of which was a questionable travel call, but there were way too many live-ball turnovers, leading to points the other way.

Good response, bad response

After falling behind 10, the Mountaineers turned things around quickly, largely due to Honor Huff heating up for a few possessions. During that stretch where they fell behind, the ball-handling was sloppy, shot selection wasn’t the greatest, and Wake Forest just out-physicaled them on the interior. Weathering that storm and tying the game up at the half was big. The punch Wake threw in the second half? Yeah, WVU must have been weak on the ropes because they had no answer.

Still no offensive identity

Aside from Honor Huff jacking up a bunch of threes every game, I’ve yet to see an identity pop up for this team offensively. What do they do extremely well? I haven’t seen anything above average play through the first ten games of the season. They haven’t shot it well or attacked the paint consistently to dominate the interior either. Something has to emerge before conference play, or it’s going to be a big uphill battle.

Allergic to passing the ball inside

I understand Wake does a pretty good job of closing out the paint, but this is something that’s been a bit of a problem all year for WVU when not playing the low major scrubs (no offense to those programs). Swinging the ball around the perimeter isn’t going to open anything up. You have a 7-footer (Harlan Obioha) and an athletic freak (Brenen Lorient) down there for a reason — pound the ball inside. If they take away the passing lanes, they need to get more downhill, and Chance Moore can’t be the only one capable.

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