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What a roller coaster of a season for WVU . Most probably don't give a shit about any of this, but I thought I'd share.
Things never really got going and something seemed broken with the team the first month and a half or so of the season. Effort was terrible, the press was dead, and bad losses piled up. Then Sagaba Konate goes out with a odd knee injury. From there Beetle Bolden couldn't stay on the floor due to injuries and the top rated incoming recruit, Derek Culver, was suspended until 2 games before conference play started.
That left the team in the hands of Esa Ahmad and Wes Harris. Ahmad was a former highly rated recruit and a guy that looks the part. However, for 3+ years he'd been a negative on the floor as he really didn't do anything if he wasn't scoring. His rebounding was below average, he turned it over at a high rate, didn't pass well, didn't handle it well, and didn't defend at all. Harris was a JUCO guy with major offers from all over, but other than on-the-ball defense and the occasional tech for something stupid he didn't bring much to the table.
Why did they play? Because Huggs doesn't really have modern lineup strategies that are predetermined before the game and adapted a little on the fly based on foul trouble and how matchups are working. Huggs gives substitutions over to Larry Harrison who is infamous for knee jerk substitutions, playing favorites, and having a deep doghouse. Esa and Wes Harris were Larry Harrison guys.
With those 2 guys as leaders what was shaping up to be a bad season turned into a nightmare. The team went 4-11 after Konate played his last game against Pitt; losing by 31 to TCU, 17 to Tennessee, 25 to Iowa State, 31 to Texas Tech, and 22 to Texas.
Then, IIRC, the day before WVU was set to play Kansas on the road the school announced Ahmad and Harris were both dismissed from the team. So now you had Konate out, Beetle mostly out, and Harris and Ahmad dismissed.
From there, Huggs turned to the young guys. Jordan McCabe was a 4* that was suddenly put in the lineup after another Larry Harrison guy (freshman Brandon Knapper) showed that he was clearly not ready to play major college basketball. Emmitt Matthews was a 4* (from Tacoma!) that was buried behind both Ahmad and Harris. Jermaine Haley was a former 5* Juco kid that had been in the lineup, but deferred to Ahmad. Then you had Derek Culver who was averaging a double/double in Big 12 play as a freshman.
With a lineup that went McCabe (Fr), Haley (Jr), Matthews (Fr), West (Jr), Culver (Fr) the team started playing with far more effort and things started to click a couple games after those 2 were dismissed. That led to wins over TCU and Iowa State at the tail end of conference play along with wins over OU and Texas Tech in the Big 12 tourney. To put that into perspective, this group closed out conference play going 4-3 while the Ahmad/Harris group had gone 2-10 since the start of conference play.
So now Huggs has his highest rated recruit since his first recruiting class coming in (Oscar Tshiebwe) and more house cleaning to do this offseason. At least 2-3 additional guys will be leaving to make room for guys with better attitudes and skillsets that better fit what WVU basketball needs. Basically, those core 5 plus maybe 1 or 2 more will be the only players likely to survive this season. But if Huggs has learned his lesson with Larry Harrison and recruiting poor fits then next year should be back to what's expected at WVU under Huggs.
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