Mountaineers Fall in OT
March 04, 2015 01:10 AM | General
Allen Fieldhouse is not an easy place to win at - even when Kansas is not at its best. And unfortunately for 20th-ranked West Virginia, the Mountaineers found that out the hard way during tonight’s 75-69 overtime loss to the No. 9-rated Jayhawks.
Kansas was 0-for-15 from 3, turned the ball over 16 times, was out-rebounded by 12, including 21-8 on the offensive glass, but was still able to overcome all of that by making 34 of 43 when nobody was allowed to guard them to complete an 18-point comeback and win its 11th straight Big 12 regular season championship.
The Jayhawks (24-6, 13-4) won this year's title the same way they won the other 10 – by not losing at home. Kansas won all 15 here this year, but for 39 minutes and 48 seconds of tonight's game this one was clearly West Virginia’s for the taking.
The Mountaineers, playing a second straight game without senior guards Juwan Staten and Gary Browne, got a career-high 23 points from freshman guard Daxter Miles Jr. and 13 off the bench from Tarik Phillip, but they needed just one more point from somebody down the stretch to salt away what would have been its best road victory of the year.
West Virginia (22-8, 10-7) led by as many as 18, 40-22, with 1:23 left in the first half on a Phillip layup. And despite a slow second half start that saw Kansas go on a 9-2 run to get back into the game, the Mountaineers were still able to keep it a two-to-three possession game for most of the second half.
Phillip’s wing jumper with 3:41 remaining got West Virginia’s lead back to eight, 57-49, and the Mountaineers were still leading by eight when play was stopped with 2:32 to go.
Following the final TV timeout, WVU had two cracks to go back ahead by 10, but Jevon Carter missed his shot try, Phillip couldn’t get his 3 to go down and then Miles was called for a foul while attempting to grab the rebound.
Kansas’ Brannen Greene made both free throws at the other end of the floor with the clock stopped at 1:55.
Then, Miles made an ill-advised length-of-the-floor pass that sailed out of bounds, giving Kansas the basketball underneath its basket with the clock still showing 1:55.
“I screwed up because I put Dax into a position that I shouldn’t have had him in (inbounding the ball),” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “He throws the ball away and they get it underneath their basket. That’s 100 percent my fault. I was trying to figure out how we get the ball to the people we need to get the ball to and I just put him in a bad spot.”
Nine seconds later, Jamari Traylor cut West Virginia’s lead to four, 57-53, and then following a Jonathan Holton turnover, Frank Mason III nailed a short jumper to pull the Jayhawks to within two, 57-55, with 47 seconds left.
After a West Virginia timeout, Mason III fouled Devin Williams but the sophomore forward was unable to get his free throw attempt to go in. Jevon Carter grabbed the miss and Mason III fouled him. Carter missed the first one and hit the second to make the score 58-55, WVU, with 33 seconds left.
Immediately, Mason III got the ball to the rim where he scored easily with 21 seconds to go. Again, Carter was fouled, and again, he was only able to get one of two to go down, making it a two-point game with 19 seconds left.
Phillip then fouled Devonte Graham in the backcourt with 12 seconds left and Graham made both free throws to tie the game.
On the final possession of regulation, West Virginia got two good looks at the basket to win it – a Carter 3 from the top of the key and then Nate Adrian’s follow-up attempt with two seconds left. But Adrian’s put-back try to win the game was swatted away by Landen Lucas and Wayne Seldon Jr. secured the rebound to run out the clock and send the game into overtime.
“I didn’t want to call timeout (to set up a play) because I didn’t want (Kansas coach Bill Self) to change defenses and then we would have had a hard time getting it inbounds,” explained Huggins. “We knew what we wanted to do and we came down and took a jump shot at the end.
“The difference was they penetrated to the basket and we didn’t,” added Huggins.
In the extra session, Kansas outscored West Virginia, 17-10, with eight of those points coming from the free throw line.
Carter, who scored 25 three nights ago at Baylor, had a tough night going 0-for-10 from the floor and finishing with just 4 points. Holton scored 12 and grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds – most of that coming in the first half when the Mountaineers built their big lead.
“We did a great job of keeping balls alive,” said Huggins. “Jon Holton was terrific. We kept the ball alive and gave ourselves a lot of second-shot opportunities.”
Mason III finished with 19 for Kansas, which also got 14 from Traylor and 12 from Kelly Oubre Jr.
The Mountaineers actually shot better from 3 (36 percent) than they did overall (34.9 percent), while also missing 12 key free throws to finish just 57.1 percent from the line.
“It’s amazing to be where we are without our two senior guards and we still, coulda- shoulda won the game,” said Huggins. “You can look back at some dumb things we did, some missed free throws, some calls that didn’t go our way and there were a lot of things that all added up.”
West Virginia concludes the regular season on Saturday afternoon against Oklahoma State in a game that will tip off at 2 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPNEWS.
That game has already been announced a sell out.
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