Mountaineers Roll Saturday at Coliseum
January 31, 2015 02:37 PM | General
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Devin Williams scored 18 points and grabbed eight rebounds to lead 17th-ranked West Virginia to a 77-58 victory over Texas Tech Saturday afternoon at the WVU Coliseum.
West Virginia also got 12 points from freshman Daxter Miles Jr. and 11 from Juwan Staten to produce its third season sweep of the Red Raiders since the Mountaineers joined the Big 12 three years ago.
The Mountaineers (18-3, 6-2) have already exceeded their win total from 2014 with a day left until February, and West Virginia remains near the top of the Big 12 standings with league leader Kansas playing Kansas State and second-place Iowa State playing TCU at home later today.
Here in Morgantown, West Virginia used an 11-2 run at the beginning of the second half to build a 20-point lead that eventually swelled to 21 with five minutes remaining.
“I really like the way we played at the beginning of the second half,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “I thought we came out and played with a lot of intensity. We kind of played and didn’t play, played and didn’t play and I think we missed seven free throws in the first half, which kind of kills your momentum.”
Texas Tech’s Robert Turner, who scored 18 points in the first half, failed to score in the second half and leading scorer Devaugntah Williams didn’t get his first basket until 4:37 remaining and he finished the game with 2 points.
Texas Tech committed 26 turnovers but made up for some of that at the free throw line where the Red Raiders made 22 of 25.
Turner finished with 18 points and Aaron Ross contributed 13 for the Red Raiders, now 11-11, 1-8.
“When you play the way we play if one guy doesn’t make a rotation you can get hurt,” said Huggins. “I thought by and large we made pretty good rotations, we just kind of instead of really going and getting them for a period in the first half we let them bring the ball up the floor and really didn’t attack them the way we can.”
Gary Browne contributed 10 points and 10 different players scored points for West Virginia.
“We’re capable and (one of) our best 3-point shooters (Jaysean Paige) really didn’t shoot it that well,” said Huggins. “Jaysean, Dax and Jevon (Carter) are in the gym all of the time shooting 3s and it’s just a matter of time before Dax gets it going because he was really our most consistent 3-point shooter early on and then he struggled.”
An announced crowd of 12,192 watched today’s game.
The Mountaineers are about to enter a grueling stretch with seven of their final 10 regular season games coming against teams ranked in the top 25, beginning with Tuesday night’s game at 24th-ranked Oklahoma.
That contest will get underway at 8 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPN2.
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