WVSports – West Virginia struggles with pressure, turnovers

It’s hard to win basketball games on the road in the Big 12 Conference.

It’s even harder when you don’t value the basketball. That was the case for West Virginia in their latest loss on the road at Iowa State where the Mountaineers turned the ball over a season-high 23 times.

And in a game that statistically was close in just about every other department in the 71-64 defeat, that proved to be significant considering those miscues turned into 29 points for the Cyclones. Those turnovers led to Iowa State getting up 14 more shots than West Virginia over the course of the game.

Yes, some of the credit goes to Iowa State considering they are one of the more challenging defenses in the country but at the same time it takes toughness to win on the road and West Virginia didn’t show that according to their head coach Josh Eilert.

“Part of toughness is being able to face adversity and face that ball pressure and I didn’t think we did a good job in that regard,” he said.

Admittedly it’s hard to simulate the defensive intensity that the Cyclones play with on that end of the floor, especially with the buy-in that they show. But that’s no excuse for some of the unforced errors that led to easy scoring opportunities on the other end.

It’s not as if West Virginia wasn’t aware of the pressure they’d face, and turnovers have been a problem throughout the year with teams scoring 75 points off miscues in three losses before the win over UCF.

But until the Mountaineers can show that they can handle it, they will continue to struggle in closely contested games.

“We didn’t take care of the ball and kind of lost our poise in some situations which led to the end result,” Eilert said.

The Mountaineers are now 0-11 on the season in games away from Morgantown and will next head to Kansas State for a game Monday. But if this team wants to find a way to win these types of games, they simply can’t make it harder on themselves with mistakes.

It’s been a problem for West Virginia for most of the year and remains that way as we approach the end.