Photo courtesy of BlueGoldNews.com West Virginia men’s basketball head coach Darian DeVries congratulates his team for one of its few good stretches of play against Arizona State.

MORGANTOWN — Whenever a basketball team throws in a clunker the way West Virginia did on Tuesday night in losing, 65-57, to a generally average or below Arizona State at home you look for reasons that it cropped up at that moment.

And remember, we’re looking for reasons, not excuses because Coach Darian DeVries has stressed all season that this team would not have excuses.

Now it’s true, sometimes the difference between and excuse and a reason is quite subtle, but this team (cough, cough) had reasons for this game almost being predictably dismal.

We use the term (cough, cough) intentionally.

To explain, we fast forward to the post-game press interview when Sencire Harris was asked about the report that had come out before game time that a “bug” — not an electronic listening device but, instead, an old-fashioned flu-like bug — had stricken some members of the team.

Before he could get a word out of his mouth as he was about to answer the question he — yes –coughed.

“We just started to run out of gas a little bit, especially me,” he said. “During the Iowa State game, I was down. I was a little bit sick and ended up fighting through it. These past two days I’ve been recovering and resting, so I was a little bit winded out there.

“It was tough a little bit. My team picked me up. I kind of let them down tonight. It wasn’t about me being sick. It was about me being out there for our team,” he added.

Coach Darian DeVries, too, had admitted that such a bug did strike his team, but it was not used as an excuse.

“We didn’t play the way we needed to play tonight,” was as far as he would go on it.

But no one doubts they played sick. They were a step slow on defense. Their shooting was off. They were pushed around on the boards.

Could you have a reason that they had used up all their energy against Iowa State in beating the nation’s No. 2 team?

Certainly, you can, even if they refuse to. See, you are not supposed to do that. Every game is supposed to be approached the same, but any coach willing to speak the truth will tell you that some games do not measure up to others in getting you prepared.

It may even be the No. 1 reason for losses.

You look at a team that had lost 7 in a row on the road, that had one Big 12 victory, that hadn’t really shown anything to make WVU recapture what it had against Iowa State and you throw in a cold midweek night, a 9 o’clock start, a crowd that just couldn’t match the Iowa State crowd.

It was one of those trap games players and coaches talk about.

See, this is the Big 12 and it’s just a different kind of league than others.

Harris, who played at Illinois, in the Big 12 mentioned that after the game.

“Me, coming from the Big Ten. I was just talking to TJ Shannon about it yesterday,” he said, referring to a former Illinois teammate now in the NBA. “I said in the Big Ten, you always knew who was going to win that game tonight. In the Big 12, you never know who is going to win any game. It can be a battle any night.

“We just didn’t bring it today. We are going to go back in the lab and correct things.”

That’s a reason Big 12 teams sometimes are downgraded in the seedings come NCAA Tournament time because there are upsets, teams that pull off what look like big upsets but that really there isn’t all that big a difference from top to bottom in the league.

And then there were matchup problems for WVU. If a team can stop Javon Small, without Tucker DeVries available due to injury, WVU doesn’t have that go-to No. 2 guy to make up the points and that happened Tuesday night.

At the same time, Arizona State has a couple of big dudes who play down low, score inside, block shots and rebound, which means that they are built to take advantage of the Mountaineers’ biggest deficiencies.

“Those [baskets in the paint, 18 of them to be exact] are all the rotation things you have to be good at,” DeVries said. “If Eduardo or Toby is going to come over and provide help, the next defender is the guy who has to save the day on the back side and they weren’t there tonight. Some of that is dribble penetration. If you keep the ball in front of you, we don’t have to come over and give help. We had to do that way too much tonight.”