MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia is two late free throws at St. John's last Saturday away from being one of six remaining undefeated college basketball teams as we plod our way into December.
 
Of the five left, just two reside in Power 5 conferences – 9-0 Ohio State and 8-0 Auburn - and both are shooting close to 50 percent from the floor so far this season.
 
"You don't always make shots, and I think (No. 1) Louisville, for instance, is going through a period where they are not making shots," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins explained on Wednesday. "They didn't make shots the last game, and they were fortunate to win, and it carried over and they didn't make shots (against Texas Tech). Likewise, Texas Tech had just lost a couple, and they made shots."
 
Undefeated Liberty is shooting 48 percent, unblemished Duquesne (who West Virginia defeated in an exhibition game last month) is shooting 46.6 percent while 10-0 San Diego State is connecting at a 45.5 percent clip.
 
It goes without saying that you have to make shots to win basketball games, but you CAN win games even if you don't make a high percentage of them.
 
Consider West Virginia's most recent run of success from 2015-18 when the Mountaineers won 105 games and reached the NCAA Tournament "Sweet 16" three times. None of those teams was particularly efficient shooting the ball. The 2015 team ranked 287^th in the country (out of 345) converting just 40.8 percent of its field goal attempts.
 


A year later, the Mountaineers upped their percentage to 44.9 percent to rank 129^th. 
 
West Virginia's best shooting team since joining the Big 12 was its 2017 version that shot 45.4 percent to rank 120^th in the country.
 
Two years ago, the Mountaineers' shooting percentage dipped to 43.6, yet despite this, West Virginia was just a bad five-minute stretch away from knocking off eventual NCAA champion Villanova in the round of 16.
 
Then came last year when West Virginia's shooting plummeted to 41.3 percent (315^th out of 351 teams), requiring Huggins to take a hard look at his roster. He specifically sought out high-scoring junior college guards Sean McNeil and Taz Sherman to help in this area.
 
"We made a conscious effort to go out and recruit guys we thought could make shots, made shots where they were – and I think they will make shots – but they haven't made shots yet," he said. "We've won games because we've rebounded the ball really well."
 
Through eight games this season, West Virginia's shooting has improved slightly – 42.7 percent – but it's still not good enough to put the Mountaineers among the elite teams in the country.

For these guys, that threshold is probably somewhere around 45 percent.
 
Consider this: the last five NCAA champions have shot at least 46.6 percent from the floor. 
 
Duke, which won the 2015 NCAA title, converted 50.2 percent of its field goal attempts that season. Villanova made half of its field goal tries during its championship run in 2018 while Virginia shot 47.4 percent last year.
 
North Carolina shot 46.6 percent on the way to a title in 2017 and the poorest shooting team to win a national championship in the last 10 years was Connecticut, which connected on just 43.4 percent of its field goal attempts in 2011.
 
That was also during the pre-Freedom of Movement days when the toughest teams in the country were also seemingly the most successful, which ironically, was the case last Saturday afternoon in the Garden. 
 
St. John's was allowed to play the way the game used to be played a decade ago.
 
"That's going to happen," Huggins said. "It's like missing shots. It's going to happen, but you have to figure out how to win when you miss shots. We've done that before because we've rebounded it better than everybody else and defended better than everybody else.
 
"You can't go 5-for-12 from the foul line - and a lot of that was front end of one-and-ones - and we had to have missed at least 10, 12 point-blank 1-footers," he added. "You miss shots sometimes and that's understandable, but I don't know about missing that many of those."
 
Games coming up Thursday against 4-4 Austin Peay and Saturday against 5-4 Nicholls at the WVU Coliseum are opportunities for the Mountaineers to find their shooting stroke.
 
Right now, West Virginia has just two guys shooting it well– freshman Oscar Tshiebwe (56.5 percent) and senior Jermaine Haley (66 percent).
 
Neither takes a lot of 3s, and the rest of the team taking them is making just 35.3 percent of its attempts.
 
To be 7-1 the way it has shot the basketball is an indication of the enormous potential this team possesses. And Huggins knows it.
 
"If we could ever get Sean shooting it the way Sean is capable of shooting it, Taz shooting it and Chase (Harler) shooting it, then we've really got something. Then that opens things up a lot more for Oscar and Derek (Culver) as well," he said.
 
A 7 p.m. tipoff is slated for Thursday night's game against Austin Peay. Nexstar (Dan Zangrilli, Warren Baker and Amanda Mazey) will televise the game in West Virginia on WVNS (Beckley), WOWK (Charleston), WBOY (Clarksburg) and WTRF My Ohio (Wheeling).

The game also will be livestreamed for free through WVUsports.com and will be available via Roku on your smart television as well.
 
The Mountaineer Sports Network's radio coverage with Tony Caridi and Jay Jacobs begins at 6 p.m.
 
The Governors will be making their first-ever appearance at the Coliseum.