Full disclosure, I’m not sure if this exercise is actually helping me. I both feel better and feel more sad, so I’m just going to have to keep writing until the answer is clear. Worst case scenario, I get back to my writing roots which I’ve been meaning to do.
Pops, it seems like we’ve already come back down to Earth. It’s hard not to overreact this early into the season when you’re so passionate about a team, but I can’t help but feel like we played SIGNIFICANTLY worse than the season opener. Maybe it’s just the early season jitters but nothing looked as good as it did two nights ago.
Things were fine the first 10 minutes of the game but after that it just went to shit. Remember how I said we didn’t have a 7 footer and that’s why we were losing the rebounding battle? It turns out that we DO have a 7 footer, he just doesn’t act like one. Harlan Obioha played a lot of minutes and only finished with 6 rebounds. Campbell has a guy who’s 6’11” but he was in foul trouble so Obioha was going up against guys who were 6’7″ at the most. As you used to say, in the rebounding battle you have to want it more, and he just didn’t want it bad enough. It shouldn’t come as a shock to you that we lost that rebounding battle 40–36.
Campbell, much like Mount St. Mary’s, didn’t have one single guy who was killing us, but they had two standouts in Dovydas Butka and Chris Fields Jr. Butka is a 6’7″ forward who has some game to him. He’s kind of bounced around; he played at Pepperdine before coming here and he also has some EuroLeague experience. He’s got good game feel and ended the game with 14 points. Fields Jr., on the other hand, is one of those aforementioned 6’7″ guys who were killing us on the glass. He didn’t do much else other than rebound and he ended the night with 15 of them.
We just took a step back in almost every way that matters in basketball: we forced less turnovers, we shot worse from the field, and we had less points in the paint. The only thing we really improved on was our 3 point shooting, and that deserves an asterisk because how much better is shooting 35% when compared to 27% the first game? Like, sure, it’s league average but it certainly isn’t good.
Not a great game for the guys who I said would carry this offense, either. Jasper Floyd didn’t seem like himself and only shot five times, finishing with a 2/5/4 stat line and Brenen Lorient was in a similar boat with 12/9/4 but shot poorly. Honor Huff really came to play though finishing with 22 points and hitting 4 threes. Another positive though was Treysen Eaglestaff. I sent you a highlight reel of him once he committed to WVU, and while he still didn’t perform as well as I’d like him to, he showed me more than what he did in the first game.
I feel like this was supposed to be another tune up game for us, and it turned into a nail bitter, which makes me VERY worried about Big 12 play. I will say that it seemed like Coach Hodge was experimenting a little out there with lineups and schemes. A couple of times we broke out this 1–2–2 full court press. I wouldn’t say it was effective but maybe it’s something we can use in the future. I just wish that we didn’t play with our food, even if it is early in the season.
I certainly didn’t think that we would have gone 25–5 this year like ESPN predicted we would, but now I am certain that we won’t. I’m trying to take it in stride because first year head coaches typically don’t win anything, and like I told you before, I think that Ross Hodge is here to build a program and that will take time. A lot of time. Part of that is going to come with the development of the young guys, and if DJ Thomas and Amir Jenkins stay in the Old Gold and Blue, we might have something special.
We won 73–65 but I’m not happy about it. I wish you were here to watch the games with me, but part of me is glad that you don’t have to watch ugly hoops. Two of our next three are “tune ups” and the other one is against Pitt. You missed us beating Pitt in football, but I’m hopeful that we can pull out the Backyard Brawl Sweep this year.
I’ve got to head to bed. Now that I’m 30 my bed time is the millisecond the game ends, but I’ll talk to you again on Sunday when we play Lehigh. I love ya, Pops. I miss you. It’s a great day to be a Mountaineer.
Round The Game 
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