Mountain State Times

No. 7 Longhorns Outlast West Virginia Saturday Night in Morgantown

 No. 7 Texas held West Virginia scoreless over the remaining 2:39 to defeat the Mountaineers 69-61 Saturday night at the WVU Coliseum.
 
The Longhorns, trailing 28-26 at halftime, shot 53.8% and made 13 of their 17 of their free throws in the second half to win for the third straight time in Morgantown.
 
"I didn't think we had any pep in our step, and I didn't think we had a whole lot of emotion," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said afterward.
 
The complexion of the game changed during a four-minute stretch early in the second half after Seth Wilson's 3 gave WVU its biggest lead, 38-33. It took Texas two possessions to tie the game, and then the Longhorns got the lead on Marcus Carr's jumper.
 
Texas took the lead for good at the 10-minute mark on Dylan Disu's put-back basket, and then Carr turned Emmitt Matthew's turnover into a 3 at the other end, giving Texas a 49-44 advantage.
 
A Tre Mitchell 3 from the top of the key with 7:53 left, and James Okonkwo's layup 23 seconds later kept the deficit at two, but Texas responded with back-to-back baskets. Texas' lead swelled to seven, 60-53, on Timmy Allen's two free throws, and after Kedrian Johnson's short jumper, it turned into a free throw shooting contest. 
 
Carr made 6-of-6 over a two-minute span, and then added a short jumper with 44 seconds remaining. Carr, a first-team All-Big 10 performer last year at Minnesota, was as good as advertised with a game-high 23 points on 8-of-14 shooting. He also made 5-of-6 at the free throw line.
 
Tyrese Hunter scored 11 and Christian Bishop came off the bench to contribute 11 for the Longhorns, now 16-3, 5-2.
 
West Virginia got a career-high 22 points from Kedrian Johnson, while Mitchell added 12, although only 3 of those came after intermission.
 
The Mountaineers turned the ball over 20 times leading to 19 Longhorn points. Texas also had advantages in bench scoring (20 to 12) and points in the paint (32 to 20).
 
"We're not going to win games turning it over 20 times," Huggins said. "We spent an enormous amount of time trying to get that fixed and I thought for a while we had it fixed, but obviously it was a short-term fix."
 
West Virginia, which shot just 38.5% overall, used eight 3s to keep close. Kedrian Johnson, a 25.6% 3-point shooter coming into tonight's game, was 3 of 5 to lead the Mountaineers.
 
West Virginia shot 13 of 18 at the free throw line, but four of those misses came in the second half.
 
"You can't win games in this league going to the free throw line missing shot after shot after shot – you just can't do it," Huggins said. "So, we throw the ball to them, we don't make free throws, and then we shot it very poorly. You don't have a chance.
 
"I'm beside myself because I thought we were kind of getting it moving in the right direction," Huggins added.

During his postgame radio show, Huggins addressed some of the offensive difficulties his team experienced tonight.

"We run sets every single day and there are guys who don't have a clue what they're doing," he said. "I can't say we'll fix it and it's not fixed. I'm going to work like crazy to do everything I can possibly do to fix it."
 
A season-high 14,141 watched tonight's game.
 
Tonight's loss drops WVU's record to 11-8, 1-6 and the Mountaineers will return to the road where they will play at winless Texas Tech on Wednesday night. The Red Raiders are now 0-7 in conference play after this afternoon's 68-58 loss at Kansas State. 

Original source can be found here