Mountaineers Roll Over Glenville
November 06, 2015 09:45 PM | Men's Basketball
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Daxter Miles Jr. scored 20 points on seven of 12 shooting in leading West Virginia to a 114-76 exhibition game victory over Glenville State here tonight at the WVU Coliseum.
Division II Glenville, picked to finish sixth in the Mountain East Conference this year, scored the first basket of the game and trailed by six at the first media timeout before West Virginia’s full-court pressure defense began to wear the Pioneers down.
West Virginia scored 11 straight points to build its lead to 13, and the margin eventually swelled to 20 on a Lamont West dunk with 5:40 to go in the half.
Another Mountaineer scoring flurry near the end of the half got the margin to 31 at the break.
“I thought we played pretty hard the first half,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “We made some shots when we did run offense. In the second half we just tried to get it over with.”
In the second half, the Mountaineers continued to wear Glenville down with its pressure as play became sloppy on both ends.
West Virginia’s biggest lead was 47, 101-54, with 7:51 remaining.
“I think the play that says what we were in the second half was when we knocked the ball loose with three seconds left on the shot clock and the ball rolls underneath the basket,” said Huggins. “We’ve got five guys above the foul line and they go and pick it up and lay it in.”
The Mountaineers shot 53.2 percent for the game, 41-of-77, including 13-of-39 from 3 (39.4 percent).
Jevon Carter contributed 15 points, forward Jonathan Holton had 14, forward Nathan Adrian scored 13 and freshman forward Esa Ahmad had 11. Holton and Williams each grabbed 10 rebounds for the Mountaineers.
The two areas Huggins said on Thursday he was unhappy with during the closed scrimmage against Temple last weekend were rebounding and turnovers, and there didn’t appear to be much improvement in either tonight.
West Virginia had just a 13-rebound advantage on the glass against the much, much smaller Pioneers while turning the ball over 15 times.
“If we keep throwing it around like we’re throwing it around we’re not going to be very good,” said Huggins. “Quite frankly, Jevon Carter and Tarik Phillip, one or both of them have to get a whole lot better at being point guards. They’re both good players but not with the ball in their hands trying to run a team right now and we’ve got to get them up to speed in a hurry.”
Guard Micah Thomas led Glenville with 17.
The Mountaineers open the season next Friday night at the WVU Coliseum against Northern Kentucky in a 7 p.m. game that will be televised locally on West Virginia Media stations throughout the state.
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