West Virginia suffered a 70-54 loss to No. 10 Houston on Wednesday night on the road, as they were unable to complete multiple comeback attempts.
It was a close contest throughout the start of the first half before the Cougars started to pull away, opening a 13-point halftime lead. West Virginia then cut the Houston lead to single digits, including as few as three points, but never could get the game tied or retake the lead in the second half.
Part of the issue was turnovers. WVU turned the ball over 12 times, leading to 25 points, but they were very inopportune for the Mountaineers.
"We knew going into it that turnovers were going to be the biggest key. We only had 12 turnovers which was maybe a couple more than you would like, but all of them seemed like resulted in points," West Virginia head coach Darian DeVries said.
West Virginia cut Houston's lead to 51-48 with 12:36 to play in the second half. The Mountaineers' next bucket came at the 4:40 mark of the second half. During that span, WVU turned the ball over twice during Houston's 14-0 run, as those two turnovers led to five points.
"I thought every time we got back in there, it seemed like it was a big turnover from us that didn't give us a shot to even get the ball up at the rim and those are the things that are just killers.
When you are playing a team on their home floor and you get it down to five and I think two times we get it down to five with the ball and we turned it over both times. Both of them were unforced. Those were the things we talked about we couldn't have those in this game and unfortunately we had too many," DeVries said.
West Virginia's 12 turnovers were the fewest forced by the Cougars in their five Big 12 games this season.
"I thought just those 12 turnovers, if you eliminate some of those, we are able to get good shots at the rim, it was just unfortunate we got stuck along the sideline or baseline in some double teams and we weren't able to get it out and go make a play," DeVries said.
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