How many WINs remain for WVU

My brain is telling me 4 more wins - TT and Iw St @ home. We get one win with Baylor, probably @ home.
That leaves an upset win against either Ok St @ home or against OK away.

Can OK beat WVU 3 times in a season? Hard to do..... but it requires WVU to play inspired.
Do they have it in them??

As bad as this team has been all season in all aspects of the game, we've been competitive in all but 4 games (Gonzaga, Michigan, Purdue, Oklahoma St) playing up to better competiion and unfortunately down to worse.   If you think about it, we are pretty much a terrible Duquesne loss away from being in the bubble conversation (our RPI is about 90 now so had we not blown that game we'd probably be in the 70s with only one game remaining against weak competition and 7 opportunities to pick up quality wins). 
        
Here's the way I see it.  We played the Iowa St game without Henderson and the KState game without Staten.  We lost those games by a combined 3 points.  We lost to Oklahoma twice but played them tough both times.  We haven't played Baylor yet, and we lost to Kansas by 5.  The only conference game we really seemed outmatched in was the Okie St game.   And we have been shooting the ball much better in the past few games (playing bad competition doesn't matter in that regard as we've showed no bias all season with shooting pathetic against everyone...)   

Wednesday's game is huge for us.  Win that one and suddenly we are in 5th place in the B12 and in position for a first round bye in the B12 tournament.  BB - even if we don't go 4-4 or better, this team has shown they can compete with anyone in the conference which means that in a 3 game showdown we have a legit shot at that auto-bid...

I voted 8 and sorry, you can't have what I'm smoking.  We have the athletes who are capable of winning, and they seem to be getting a hold of the program.  The Freshman are getting better with each game.  We just need to keep the Truck Bryant imitations to a minimum.

Lets get this team back on the bubble.  The future looks good with most of this team returning next year. 

I'm with Vandy and Another. I voted 7 because we have shown that we CAN compete with any team this year (with the exception of the 4 games that Vandy mentioned). I saw something when we played TCU that I hadn't seen this season. Effort and confidence at running the offense. There was constant motion with 100% effort and in doing that, they found open shots. It seems like all season they were half assing the motion offense, would waste the entire shot clock trying to work it inside to Klutz, who would fumble the ball away or they would force a bad shot or a bad drive to the basket. I don't want to be too optimistic and end up disappointed, but I think we have a shot a getting back on the bubble. Tonights game makes me nervous. Baylor has great shooting guards in Haslep and Jackson (especially Jackson...fast as lightening...a slasher that can create his own shot) and some big guys down low that can score as well. This is college basketball. I know ya'll remember the 2004-05 season when we went on a run and made it to the Elite 8. Anything can happen this time of year. I just hope that what we've saw the in the past 3 games is for real.

Gotta love the Mountaineer fans - they are always looking for a reason to believe in their team.
It is part of why I love being a Mountaineer. On the positive side - not one person voted zero wins.
On the other end - not a single delusional fan picked 8 wins and a tourney sweep?? What's up wit dat??

Tonight will tell us a lot about the character and the potential for this team for the remainder of the season.
Given that the game is on the road, I am predicting a tight score regardless of who wins it.

The reason I say this game will reveal much about where the WVU team is today is this.....
WVU has stunk it up on the road. With a few exceptions, they have tanked away from home.
They opened the season with 4 away games and lost all but Marist. Then they lost @ Duquesne & Mich.
They lost @ Iowa St, PURDUE and OK St. They did manage a win @ Texas.

So until this recent 3 game streak with wins @ TT and TCU, only Marist and Texas away from home.
So if they can add a win tonight @ Baylor, then maybe there is a chance to pull off the upset
@ Kansas, Kansas St or Oklahoma.

The stuff dreams are made of....

Tonight's game will be interesting.  Baylor has looked really good at times, and they have looked kind of bad at times.  Not sure how well WVU will compete with them on the road.  But, a win there would be huge.

Prior to WVU's current 3 game win streak, they had lost 7 of 8 games.  3 of those games they lost by double digits.  In the KU and ISU games, they were down by double digits but fought back in each to make it closer at game's end.  Maybe these better teams in the Big 12 play down to the level of WVU... instead of WVU playing up?

We'll find out down the stretch.... as I don't believe WVU's defense is that much better... just the competition has been pretty bad lately.   

I believe the defense has improved quite a bit.  However, rebounding has gone the other way.  As I said in another thread, if we don't get a body on these Baylor guys, you will see a lot of second chance points and a loss.  If we can box out and limit second chance points, I really like our chances in this game.  I think we can beat them down the court in transition - if we can defensive rebound.

We'll find out down the stretch.... as I don't believe WVU's defense is that much better... 

I think it's our offense, not the defense, that has improved A LOT over the past few games...  We've shot +50% twice, and 48% in the past 3 games.         

just the competition has been pretty bad lately.  

Our offense had been pathetic against everyone (not just our stronger opponents) - we shot 37% against Marshall, 33% against Duquesne, 45% against VMI, 46% against Radford, and 35% against V-Tech.   

Everyone says offense feeds off of defense.  For us, I think this has worked in reverse.  We're not losing games because of our half court defense.  We are losing games because we go on long no scoring droughts which end up taking their toll on our guys. We don't get back fast enough on defense and it results in fast break points the other way.  When we make shots, our defense has more time to get set.  

I'm going with a repeat of the football game (why not?)... 70-63 final in favor our the Mounties.

I think it's our offense, not the defense, that has improved A LOT over the past few games...  We've shot +50% twice, and 48% in the past 3 games.        

Agree, I have made the exact same point a few times this past couple of days. 

However, rebounding has gone the other way.  As I said in another thread, if we don't get a body on these Baylor guys, you will see a lot of second chance points and a loss.  

The rebounding issue has been mentioned a lot of late.  At least part of the reason for the change in this statistic has been our improved shooting.  Missed outside shots tend to result in a lot of offensive rebounds (hence the reason why we lead the conference in offensive rebound stats!)  It's the offensive glass where we've been outrebounded in the last few games.  Last game, for instance, we only had 5 offensive rebounds.  We shot 7-10 from 3 point range though, and Noreen had 2 offensive rebounds on those misses.  TCU missed 15 threes and grabbed a lot of long boards off those misses.  Those are often 50/50 balls though, and while we need to do a better job hustling to pull them down, I don't think this is a case of us suddenly getting pushed around inside the paint.  Had TCU shot better, and we shot worse, the rebounding statistics would have been more in our favor.

Or not. Without Henderson out there with Harris we don't have much chance since our other guards can't shoot at all. I felt like huggs didnt really give Henderson much of a chance. He took a bad shot and was yanked in the first half then didn't get in again until late in the game when it was way too late. Harris is a heck of a player. Until we fell apart completely at the end, I actually didn't think we played that badly. Lots of turnovers - a lot of offensive fouls. Too many whistles in my opinion... Oh well.

The offense wasn't the major problem last night... sure... the TO's hurt.  But, the team was shooting the ball well for most of the game... they ended with a 43.5% FG night... not too shabby.

Not sure I've seen a game with more moving screens called.

The defense gave up 80 points.  Pretty sure Henderson is less than average defender.  Probably why he wasn't getting much PT. 

Man...that was hard to watch. Turnovers, fouls, and Heslip killed us. I was worried about him because he did the same thing last time we played Baylor. We out rebounded them and we held Jackson below his average (6 of his 15 pts. were FT's) but he did have 9 assists. Gathers came off the bench and put up 22. I didn't see that coming. The offense didn't have the flow that it had against TCU. I blame that on the whistle happy zebras. Huggy was constantly making substitutions because of foul trouble.

That game had an odd feel to it... We were playing good defense, scoring at a high percentage, and outrebounding them left and right. I thought we were right in the game, and then all of a sudden Baylor blew it wide open. I knew we'd be in trouble when we picked up a team foul a minute in the opening of the second half. 


Those last 13 or so minutes were grueling.  

Can I change ny vote? Must have been that cool aid I was smoking.

Big game on Saturday to see WVU get that elusive 2nd win in their last 8 games.

Realistically I can see the team winning 3 or 4 more games.  It is possible that the team could win up to 6 games, but I believe it will be a stretch.  Oklahoma will play WVU for the third time this season, although it would be hard to beat a team 3 times in a season it can very well happen; especially since it is played in Sooner nation and WVU would have to play its best game to win it. Although it is possible that the kids have bought into what Huggins has been teaching them all year long and they have the confidence to go with it.  I agree that this game tonight against Baylor will tell a lot about how far this team has come.  Hopefully, they will continue their streak. We will wait and see.

They need to get on a roll to get any more than 3. I think that if they want to do that they must win tonight. For anything to happen- this needs to snowball.