MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Bob Huggins said Monday afternoon that there could be some lineup changes when 17^th-ranked West Virginia takes on surging Oklahoma State Tuesday night at the WVU Coliseum.
 
The Mountaineers have lost three straight, two coming against the No. 1 and No. 3-rated teams in the country, but the veteran coach believes the time has come to stir things up a little bit to try and generate some more offense from a team averaging just 55.7 points in its last three games.
 
"Obviously we've got to make some changes," he said. "We've got to make some changes personnel-wise and we've got to make some changes with what we do."
 
A good candidate to see increased minutes is junior guard Taz Sherman, whose 20 points in the last 10 minutes of last Saturday's loss at Baylor have been the most effective offensive outburst from any WVU player this month.
 
West Virginia (18-7, 6-6) failed to hit a field goal in the last five minutes of the Kansas loss and went nearly 10 minutes in the second half before scoring a basket against Baylor.
 
Obviously, these long scoring droughts make it virtually impossible to win games against good teams. 
 
"We've got to score the ball, and Taz obviously has shown that he can score the ball so we'll go from there," Huggins said.
 
Beyond that, Huggins continues to seek ways to come up with more offensive movement to unclog the lane where teams are simply converging on West Virginia bigs Derek Culver and Oscar Tshiebwe and forcing them to turn over the basketball.
 
The easiest way to unclog the lane is by making some outside jump shots, which Sherman did against the Bears on Saturday. He hit 5-of-9 from 3-point distance and made 6-of-11 overall for the game.
 
That's by far the best shooting performance from any Mountaineer backcourt player since freshman guard Miles McBride went for 22 points on 8-of-11 shooting against Texas Tech more than a month ago. Huggins noted that McBride has reached the point in the college season where he has already played a full high school schedule, and it's beginning to show a little bit.
 
Earlier this year, McBride had a streak of eight straight games scoring double figures, but he has failed to hit double digits since the loss at Texas Tech nearly three weeks ago.
 
In an attempt to get more offensive movement, Huggins even introduced the weave in the second half of the Kansas game, but that was quickly aborted when the Jayhawks forced West Virginia's ball handlers to one sideline or the other.
 
"You probably don't play the halfback that runs it out of bounds all of the time," Huggins said. "When you go to the sideline it cuts the court in half so they only have to guard half the court instead of the whole floor.
 
"We can't get them spread. It's not what you run - it's the people running it, and if they are not going to make a shot why guard them?" Huggins said.
 
Opening up the floor tomorrow night is going to be extremely important going up against an Oklahoma State team that has won three of its last four and is above .500 for the first time in more than a month.
 
The Cowboys (13-12, 3-9) are coming off an impressive 73-70 victory over then 24^th-ranked Texas Tech on Saturday in Stillwater and also show recent wins against TCU and at Kansas State, where West Virginia lost by 16 back on Jan. 18.
 
In its last four games, Oklahoma State has had four different leading scorers, has tallied at least 11 points or more off of turnovers and is getting 24 a game from its bench.
 


One game it's been guard Isaac Likekele, the next it's forward Yor Anei, or guard Lindy Waters or forward Cameron McGriff.
 
Likekele and Waters are averaging 11.4 points per game, while McGriff shows averages of 10.5 points and a team-best 6.8 rebounds per contest.
 
Huggins said he is impressed with what coach Mike Boynton has been able to do to get things turned around for the Cowboys.
 
"We are sitting here and everybody in West Virginia is in a downer mode because we've lost three in a row. Look at how they started out; Mike has done a great job of keeping them together and playing hard," Huggins said. "They've fought through injuries. They're putting themselves into position where they could get an NIT bid or an NCAA Tournament bid and a few weeks ago that didn't seem possible."
 
Not only is Oklahoma State playing well, but the Cowboys have also historically played well at the WVU Coliseum.
 
OSU's five wins in this building are more than any other Big 12 team since West Virginia joined the league in 2012.
 
WVU's 55-41 victory in Stillwater earlier this year snapped a three-game losing streak to the Cowboys. In that game, Oklahoma State was 1-of-20 from 3-point range.
 
That's probably not going to happen tomorrow night.
 
"I told our guys this reminds me of the time - I believe they were 0-8 in the league - and they beat us in a real close game and went on to win 10 in a row and got into the NCAA Tournament," Huggins said.
 
Therefore, he believes it's time to try something different.
 
"We've pretty much had the same starting lineup all year, so it could be time for a change to see if that helps," he said. "We're probably playing guys too much that shouldn't play as much and probably not playing some guys that should be playing more.
 
"We're going to try and do what works best and try and win," Huggins added. "I couldn't care less if we play big or we play small. In 40-some years of doing this, we've played just about every which way you can play. I think we're past the point where we're worried about people's feelings. All of our feelings are hurt. We've lost three in a row."
 
Tuesday's game will tip at 7 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPN2.
 
After that, the Mountaineers will have another two-game road swing playing at TCU on Saturday and at Texas on Monday night.
 
There are six regular season games remaining before Big 12 Tournament play begins in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 11.