West Virginia headed into Tuesday night's game knowing they needed production from their bench unit on Tuesday as they were without Tucker DeVries.
They would find that production from an unexpected source in Joe Yesufu. Yesufu scored 14 points, including 11 in a 3:02 span to end the first half.
"Kind of a confidence booster. Been through a lot the past year recovering. Just getting those shots to go in really opened it up for me. I feel like I’m locked now," Yesufu said.
"I mean early in the game, two big threes because we had nothing, literally nothing going, and he bailed us out. That’s something I’ve seen him do in practice a lot because he runs a lot of the scout team stuff so he can continue to get those reps and it’s a big challenge for us sometimes trying to stop him. Those two threes I thought gave us a little burst there and opened things up for us," WVU head coach Darian DeVries said of Yesufu's quick run.
Coming into tonight's game, Yesufu had scored only 12 points through five games played but almost matched that entirely in a three-minute stretch in the first half.
"I’ve seen Joe do that many times before. When he was a sophomore for us at Drake, he finished off the season averaging 25-plus points a night. So, he’s more than capable of having nights like that. As he’s continued to come back from his offseason injury and things, you can see him getting more and more comfortable and certainly someone we have faith in and trust in to throw out there and do those types of things because we’ve seen it before," DeVries said.
Yesufu had struggled to get back onto the court due to battling a hip injury but took the most of his opportunity due to Tucker's absence.
"There’s always an opportunity waiting for someone. You just need to make sure when that opportunity comes, you’re ready for it. If you’re someone like a Joe who hasn’t played a lot, we continually talk to our guys, like, it’s coming. We don’t know how or when but that opportunity is going to come, so when it does, you have to be ready for it because if you’re not somebody else might be. I thought our guys have all done a good job of when their number’s been called whether it’s early in the game, late in the game, they’ve all been ready and performed to the best of their ability," DeVries said.
Yesufu went 5-for-8 from the field with four of his makes coming from beyond the arc. Yesufu totaled 14 minutes, tying the most he's played this season.
"First of all, I want to say I’m blessed, to get to even experience this stage. Going through these things I feel like I could take it on the chin, I just got to work harder. I know I got my teammates to pick me up and I got god so if I got those things I’m straight," Yesufu said of battling back from his injury.
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