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Mountaineer Retweet: We Are Who We Thought We Were

On the last episode of Mountaineer Retweet...we got really sad and stuff. Did a pair of Big 12 rematches get us back on track? Let's delve into the Twitters and find out.

By Matt Kirchner
Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

(Author's Note: This is out much later than I'd like. Apologies.)

We're back for another edition of Mountaineer Retweet and hopefully this one ends up being a little bit less depressing than last Monday's K-State edition. This week, the Mountaineers had a pair of rematches on the docket: one at home against Tubby Smith's Red Raiders of Texas Tech and a road trip to Stillwater to try to avenge the devastating loss to the Oklahoma State Cowboys. Let's check in on Twitter and see how they went.

Texas Tech (1/22):

Okay, let's be honest. Attendance was god awful. However, Morgantown was even more god awful this week. Snowmageddon hit us where it hurts this week and those in charge of keeping Morgantown's roads relatively drivable were . . . mediocre, to say the least.

/stops angry rant about roads before it starts

The moral here is that while I'm normally one that gets preachy over bad attendance, I'm leaning towards letting this one slide. Get out for K-State next week, though, people!

YAY WE'RE GOOD AGAIN!

We started out this game red hot from three and suddenly basketball was fun again as the 12 people at the Coliseum waved their pennants and cheered enthusiastically for 3RON Harris.

Eron Harris appears to have lost his man.

(This are included solely because they showed up on my feed in perfect sync and it was funny.)

#Analysis

DUMPTRUCKING IN PROGESS.

WARM UP THE BUSSES.

GENERIC STATEMENT ABOUT HOW WE'RE GOING TO RUN A TRAIN ON TEXAS TECH AND EVERYONE'S GOING TO BE HAPPY AGAIN.

I hate life.

I'm sure there's a really clever Kevin Noreen/Curling joke here but I'm too lazy to think up a good one.

The Freshman giveth, the Freshman taketh away.

#positives

A 6'9, 230 QB would be pretty cool. I bet he has decent arm strength and being a good three point shooter could help with accuracy in theory. Jarrett Brown did both sports so I mean I guess it's possible....

NO MATT DON'T LET A FAKE COACH TWITTER ACCOUNT LEAD YOU INTO LEGITIMATELY BELIEVING THAT NATHAN ADRIAN IS OUR BEST QB OPTION NEXT YEAR.

Moving along.

This is about the point at which Terry Henderson put on his Iron Man suit and starting destroying everything in sight. Texas Tech might not be the greatest opponent, but what Terry did on Wednesday night was wonderful. It's great to see him play with confidence, because when that confidence is there he thinks he can hit any shot in the building and sometimes he's right.

TERRTHREE VS DUSTHREE.

(why did i type that oh my god it's going to be on the internet forever that is going to be my legacy)

This is the most annoying thing in the world when you're the team it's happening to.

Wisconsin, Gonzaga, Purdue, and Oklahoma State did it to us. We did it to Texas Tech on Wednesday.

Good for Big Sweat. Those are the plays that make him valuable to this basketball team, and frankly, the plays that he just hasn't been making this season.

Hopefully he can use this game as a jumping off point to a strong finish, because like it or not, no one has seized the opportunity to take over his minutes.

For a game between two bad teams, this ended up being pretty fun for those of us who enjoy offense. WVU never had the shooting drought that I feared was inevitable (I texted Smitty after that I felt like this was the kind of game we'd lose because we'd inevitably miss 15 straight threes somewhere in the middle of the game), and that let us keep the lead against a scrappy Texas Tech squad.

Yay! The Mountaineers gutted it out and got back to .500 in conference play. Rainbows and Unicorns for everyone!!

Presented without comment.

Oklahoma State (1/25):

And here we go. The Mountaineers last "toughest road test to date" went....poorly. Let's see if they've regained some pride and are ready to battle like the team that played Oklahoma State in Morgantown.

Jonnie West probably would have had a 27 point game if played against WVU, rather than for us.

Dusty Hannahs effect, or something.

Welpity-welp. After praising Big Sweat's efforts late against Texas Tech, I hope he had turned a corner for the year and would get back to being a solid, fundamentally sound contributor.

This did not happen against the Pokes.

This is a pattern. Not being able to keep their foot on the gas could be a trait of a young team, but frankly, it's getting old to use that excuse over and over against despite how true it may or may not be. They've gotta learn to keep up with their own quick starts and not stall out halfway through the first half.

#ThisAintGoodYo

This really isn't good, yo.

LOL, Travis Ford. Who plays walk-ons in close conference games?

Seriously.

That's so stupid.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(okay it's because gary browne had three fouls and we were desperate but this worked too well)

Oh, Marcus Smart. You lost a ton of my respect in this game. If you want to be a great NBA point guard, you have to lead by example, and Smart didn't show me a lot in that department in this game. And, it does annoy me that the Refs and announcers did nothing (for more or less, the entire game) in response to his antics. It's just not a good look for someone as talented as Smart.

Ugh. Again. We let this happen, again.

When the opponent's best player goes to the bench in foul trouble, that's when you make your big run. This is another emerging bad habit of this team. We can't seize moments like this where games are won or lost.

This is pretty much true, and it could be a good thing, honestly. We're competing against a very strong team on their home court. It's much better than the effort we showed in the Octagon of Doom, at least. There's a possibility at this point that we go into the half with either a tie or a slight lead in Gallagher-Iba.

i can't even analyze what just happened here but there were a lot of dunks and a lot of sadness

/tries to comment

/whistle blows, interrupting thought process

This will be a second half theme, you guys.

The apocalyptic end to the first actually didn't crush us. We came out strong in the second half and got right back into the game. I'm glad to see a return to the battling ways of this Mountaineer basketball team. The team that showed up against Texas and K-State would have packed it in and lost by infinity.

...

I'm allowed to have hyperbole, it's my article.

This isn't foreshadowing at all.

Yeeeeeeeeeah, that dunk by Markel Brown is probably number two behind MJ's half court dunk from Space Jam in the list of all time dunks.

It was really awesome. Markel Brown hates us.

The Dusty Hannahs Effect actually wasn't active for the Pokes. We dodged a bullet here, because this is the first time in four games that Phil Forte hasn't eviscerated us from three.

There were officiating issues in this game, and I don't want to go into them in depth because it's been done to death at this point. Harris fouling out at this point probably costs us any chance of getting this upset. He had the hot hand, and basically single-handedly willed us back into this thing. He played a great all around game. Not having him for the stretch run was brutal.

Okay one last officiating note.

DOUG GOTTLEIB WAS ON OUR SIDE ABOUT SOMETHING.

DOUG GOTTLEIB.

Okay I'm done.

The Father of the Retweet sums this up better than I could here. We're back to the beginning with this team. Good enough to beat the teams we should, but not good enough to beat teams we shouldn't. We're good enough to hang with them on a good day, but just can't finish. It's frustrating, but it's the reality that we have to deal with. Two more opportunities for quality wins are on the docket this week, at Baylor in Waco and a home rematch with Kansas State.

Until then, keep tweeting and Let's Go Mountaineers!

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