If this West Virginia basketball team has shown anything over the last 11 games, it’s that this group isn’t ever really out of a game.

For the second time during that span, the Mountaineers rallied from 19-points down in the second half in a road conference game.

They first pulled it off against Oklahoma State at the turn of the New Year, but this most recent example was perhaps the most impressive battling back from a 62-43 deficit with 18:18 left to beat the Longhorns. West Virginia outscored Texas 41-20 from that point forward and seized control.

“I think it’s just part of our culture. The DNA here is to never quit no matter how much you get down,” sophomore guard Deuce McBride said.

Comebacks like that just don’t happen by chance. It speaks to the mentality of this team that regardless how much they are down at any point, there is belief they can come back. Those 19-point road comebacks are two of the largest in school history, speaking to what the Mountaineers overcame.

“We’re a resilient bunch and we love basketball. If we get down, we’re going to fight our way back,” junior forward Emmitt Matthews said.

It was as improbable of a comeback in a season full of them. The first half the Mountaineers allowed 53 points, a season high for the Longhorns, while Texas hit 70-percent from the field. They were able to straight line drive the ball at will and made 20 of their 21 shots either in the paint or from three.

The effort on that end of the floor was as bad as West Virginia has been on defense at any point this season as Texas was able to score at will. That’s when things changed.

“I think they understood that we were about as bas as you can be in the first half,” head coach Bob Huggins said. “I think they understood that. This group generally when challenged, they’ll step up and try to meet the challenge.”

There would be no comeback without a better effort on the defensive end, and the Mountaineers switched to a matchup zone in order to slow down the Longhorns penetration. That allowed West Virginia to put the Longhorns where they wanted to be on the floor and force them into more difficult shot attempts than essentially the layup line that the first half was.

Texas hit only 11-29 shots in the second frame with only 8 points coming in the paint.

“We did a better job of forcing them into areas that we wanted them to go and we did a better job making rotations,” Huggins said. “We had three or four steals there during that stretch where we made up some points. A lot of it was those guys did a much better job guarding the ball.”

Almost every loose ball and effort play was made by West Virginia in the second half as they were able to out tough and grit the Longhorns on their own floor. Those type of contributions helped to spark the Mountaineers on their decisive run coupled with that effort on the defensive end.

The win was the fifth consecutive road win for West Virginia something that they haven’t done at any point since joining the Big 12 Conference ahead of the 2012 season. With two more road games coming up, they could match their highest total of road wins by securing another victory.

“I like to think of it as revenge as my first two years here. My first year every team took it to us, and we couldn’t really do anything about it. Every team tried to beat us by 30, 40 it doesn’t matter,” Matthews said. “This year I feel like is a big year for us.”

The Mountaineers are now sitting at 15-6 and 8-4 in the Big 12 Conference heading into the stretch run of the season with six quadrant one wins. It’s a team with a lot of confidence at the right time and one that has proven you can’t ever truly count them out of any game.

“Effort plays win games, defense wins games. We came up with more effort plays and more stops,” McBride said.

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