WVU, Texas to Hook Up on Tuesday
February 23, 2015 04:06 PM | General
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(21-6)
(17-10)MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - West Virginia will be facing a cornered and wounded Texas Longhorn team on Tuesday night at the WVU Coliseum.
Texas (17-10, 6-8) has won only four league games since blowing out the Mountaineers by 27 in Austin back on January 17. At the time Texas was riding high with a 13-4 overall record and a No. 20 national ranking after the West Virginia game, but since then the Longhorns have lost twice to Iowa State and once each to Kansas, Baylor, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.
“Injuries and those kind of things really hurt teams,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins of Texas’s recent struggles. “They lose (Isaiah) Taylor early and they’re trying to get him back in sync with everybody. (Jonathan) Holmes is out for a while and that kind of throws your chemistry out of whack. It’s kind of unfortunate the things that happen, but they happen.”
Texas is clearly on the NCAA tournament bubble now with two weeks left in the regular season and is running out of opportunities to enhance its post-season credentials.
But the Longhorns have a chance to boost their résumé in Morgantown on Tuesday night against a 20th-ranked Mountaineer team that they are undoubtedly looking forward to playing. That’s because Texas has had its way with West Virginia the last two years, the Longhorns winning the last four against the Mountaineers by an average margin of 18 points per game.
In those four games Texas is shooting 51 percent from the floor, 35.2 percent from 3-point range, 74.5 percent from the free throw line; the Longhorns have completely dominated the glass, 173-122, and have taken 31 more free throws than the Mountaineers.
At least one Texas big has performed well against West Virginia in each of those four games, and earlier this year it was freshman Myles Turner, Cameron Ridley and Jonathan Holmes doing almost all of the damage against WVU.
Those three combined to score 51 points and grab 24 rebounds against a Mountaineer front line that responded by scoring just 15 points and grabbing eight rebounds against them.
“We didn’t do a very good job,” said Huggins. “We missed a bunch of shots and we kind of panicked. I think that was the first time we really got down like that and we panicked a little bit and took some shots we shouldn’t have taken, took them too quickly and rushed things inside.”
Reducing the massive scoring and rebounding disparity inside is a good place to start if the Mountaineers want to snap Texas’s four-game winning streak against them on Tuesday night.
Another place West Virginia (21-6, 9-5) needs to shore up is on the perimeter - both by shooting better when the Mountaineer guards get open looks and also by harassing Texas’s guards and making it more difficult for them to pass the ball into the post.
West Virginia is shooting just 33.2 percent in its last four games against Texas, including 27.3 percent from 3. That obviously needs to change on Tuesday night. West Virginia also needs to get points off of the turnovers it forces. The Mountaineers were able to turn Texas over 19 times earlier this year, but those 19 turnovers only resulted in four fast-break points.
Another half-court game on Tuesday night will favor the much bigger, much more physical Longhorns.
“We just have to come out and play with great energy and great enthusiasm,” said Huggins. “If we do that then we have a chance in every game we play.”
Guard Juwan Staten, coming off consecutive 20-point performances against Kansas and Oklahoma State to earn Big 12 player of the week honors, is now averaging 14.8 points and 4.5 assists per game. In his last two games, Staten has made 15 of his 29 shot attempts, including 3-of-5 from 3. He has also made nine of his last 10 free throw attempts.
Sophomore forward Devin Williams is also averaging double digits at 10.9 points per game, but he has not scored double figures since producing a team-high 20 points back on February 7 against Baylor. Williams has scored 5, 4, 8 and 9 points in his last four games against Kansas State, Iowa State, Kansas and Oklahoma State.
Freshman guard Jevon Carter is now third on the team in scoring with an average of 8.1 points per game, followed by junior forward Jonathan Holton with averages of 7.7 points and 5.8 rebounds per game. Seven WVU players are now averaging at least 6.0 points per game.
Tuesday night’s game will tip off at 7 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPN2. The Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG’s radio coverage begins at 6:30 p.m.
Locally, with the WVU women playing at TCU on Tuesday night, WRLF-FM in Fairmont will carry the men’s pregame show and a portion of the Texas game before switching over to the women’s broadcast at 8 p.m.
WZST-FM in Morgantown will air the men’s game in its entirety.
Tickets sill remain for the game and can be purchased by calling the Mountaineer Ticket Office toll-free at 1-800-WVU GAME or by logging on to WVUGAME.com.
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