There’s been a lot of discussion about Monday’s loss to UConn. Or, more specifically, about the ridiculous amount of fouls called during the game.

The WVU fans obviously felt something smelled. Huggins quite obviously felt the same. But, what do the numbers actually say?

Fouls obviously play a role in the game, but it’s the foul shots that make the greatest impact. So, I decided to look at how many free throw attempts (FTA’s) WVU and its opponents take.

Here are the results…

To pull the numbers, I looked at all of the regular season games.

During that span of games, WVU had an average of 22.3 FTA, their opponents had an average of 21.1 FTA.

Looking at all regular season wins, WVU had an average of 22.8 FTA, their opponents had an average of 18.6 FTA. Looking at the flip side of that, the regular season losses, WVU averaged 20.8 FTA while their opponents averaged 29.8 FTA.

Narrowing our focus to only the Big East games…

Looking at all of WVU’s Big East games, they averaged 23.6 FTA while their opponents averaged 23.0 FTA.

Looking at Big East wins, WVU averaged 24 FTA, opponents averaged 19 FTA. For Big East losses, WVU averaged 23 FTA and opponents averaged 31.2. However, that 31.2 includes the UConn loss. If you take that horribly officiated game out of the mix, the average falls to 28.5 (the average FTA for WVU in Big East losses remains 23, with or without the UConn game.)

In other words, UConn shot 47% more free throws than the average WVU opponent in Big East losses, 82% more free throws than the average opponent in Big East games (wins and losses) and 99% more free throws than the average WVU opponent.

99% more! Yeah… I’d say Huggs had every right to be upset about the officiating.