Observations: West Virginia basketball vs. Kansas State
No. 10 West Virginia took care of business at home against Kansas State 65-43 to move to 17-6, 10-4 in the Big 12 Conference.
Managing Editor Keenan Cummings provides his thoughts and observations on what unfolded on the court and what could come next.
--Again, this wasn’t pretty in the first half, but West Virginia found a way to get it done again to move their record to 17-6 and 10-4 in the Big 12. This team now essentially has a two-game lead in the Big 12 for second place with three games left to play after losses by both Oklahoma and Texas today, while Kansas still has to square off against Baylor. Credit the Mountaineers again for taking care of business against a team that simply isn’t as good as them, but they could have been easily caught looking ahead to Baylor. They didn’t especially in the second half as the Mountaineers were able to push the game out of reach and get another big win. This team has done this in a variety of ways and the fact they still continue to find ways to gut out wins in different ways speaks to the possibilities of this club.
--We’ve dogged it a lot and some of this has to do with Kansas State, but the Mountaineers were much better on the defensive end in this one holding the Wildcats to 29-percent from the field on 15-51 shooting and only 3-19 from deep. Now, some of those were open looks that didn’t drop but it’s encouraging that the Mountaineers were able to get some stops although they gave up more offensive rebounds and second chance attempts than you would like to see. They were active and really forced the issue and held Kansas State to .667 points per possession in the second half. The 43 points allowed was the lowest output West Virginia has held a team to all year and the best performance since Oklahoma State last season when they held the Cowboys to 41 points.
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