When the shots fall it's a cure all for WVU
In consecutive losses West Virginia simply didn’t shoot the ball well.
And against Texas, at least for a half, it appeared the Mountaineers were well on the way to making that a third straight game with shooting woes.
Then they made some shots and everything changed.
After hovering around 40-percent from the field in losses to Texas Tech and Kansas, the Mountaineers started 30-percent against the Longhorns but built a ten-point halftime lead on the back of converting turnovers into points and having second chance opportunities.
In fact, 27 of the 32 points scored by West Virginia in the first half came by those categories. The Mountaineers did their job on the defensive end as well holding Texas scoreless over an eight-minute stretch and allowing the Longhorns to hit only 38-percent of their shots.
The second half was a different story altogether with the Mountaineers hitting 66-percent from the field, 19-29, while scoring on 23 of the 37 possessions in the second frame. That was good enough for 1.459 points per possession even with seven turnovers of their own.
The difference?
“We made some shots, we ran better offense,” head coach Bob Huggins said. “We get pretty good shots when we run offense.”
For the first time in several outings, West Virginia was able to put together a full 40-minutes which was the message from Huggins coming into the game. Even when the shots weren’t falling, the head man wanted to see the same effort on both ends of the floor.
That didn’t happen before. That did happen Saturday.
In large part because this was a game that West Virginia felt it had to win and one look at the standings will show you exactly why that is likely true. You have to protect your home floor in this league if you want to compete for a championship and consecutive losses at home would be a serve blow to that.
“We came together as one. We told ourselves at halftime let’s go out with the same intensity and execute the same and we did,” sophomore James Bolden said. “We dropped two games and that’s definitely not what we wanted but it’s how it worked. We didn’t want to drop three.”
Bolden scored 19 points off the bench and battled through a groin injury to return to the game in the second half.
The Mountaineers moved the basketball more effectively than they have in recent contests and attacked the rim in order to try to get Texas shot blocker Mo Bamba out of the paint. Overall, West Virginia had 16 assists on 31 made baskets while Texas only had 17 made baskets themselves.
“We were patient,” junior Esa Ahmad said. “We were looking for the open guy early and late and we found it.”
Even when things tightened up some in the second half, there was no panic on the West Virginia bench. The Mountaineers had lost consecutive games while leading by double-digits in the second half but this was different in large part because of the intensity level from the jump.
“We felt like we were in good position the whole time,” Ahmad said.
That effort on the offensive end, translated to the defensive end as the Mountaineers held Texas to 29-percent from the floor in the second half.
“When you make shots you like to play defense better. We were flying around pretty good today,” Huggins said. “It was kind of like what we were doing before.”
Before was during a 15-game win streak that saw the program rise to as high as No. 2 in the national polls.
West Virginia needed a spark and it got it at the perfect time on both ends of the floor and it all started with simply making some shots.
