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WVU Wears Down TCU to Advance in Big 12 Tourney
March 10, 2016 09:54 PM | Men's Basketball
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KANSAS CITY – If you studied the box scores from the two prior West Virginia-TCU basketball games this season you will notice two clear things: one, lots of fouls - which happened tonight - and, two, accurate West Virginia shooting - which occurred as well.
West Virginia shot 55.6 percent for the game – its best field goal percentage since making 57.7 percent of its shots against the Horned Frogs back on January 4, and the two teams were called for a combined 48 fouls as the Mountaineers ran away with an 86-66 victory in tonight’s Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship quarterfinal round game played here at the Sprint Center in Kansas City.
Tonight’s triumph was West Virginia’s first in conference tournament play since joining the Big 12 in 2012, and it was also the Mountaineers’ first in conference tourney action since beating Georgetown in the finals of the 2010 Big East tournament played at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
“It’s our first time being in the Big 12 - to get a win in the tournament - so I guess that’s somewhat of an accomplishment,” said junior forward Devin Williams. “But we are here to win a championship, so, all we can do is just use this to move forward and clean up what we did today and move forward.”
The Mountaineers never trailed, built a double-digit lead seven minutes into the game, and maintained a comfortable margin throughout.
The closest TCU could get was down nine with 9:36 remaining following a pair of Malique Trent free throws, but West Virginia answered with a Jaysean Paige three and eventually its lead swelled to 16, then to 18 and finally to 20 as the Horned Frogs began to wear down.
“That’s kind of what we do,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “We continue to pressure and it’s an accumulative effect, hopefully it is, that we get to their legs a little bit and they start to miss some shots.”
Williams scored 18 points and grabbed 13 rebounds (his 31st career double-double), Jevon Carter added 15, while Tarik Phillip (13) and Paige (12) came off the bench to contribute a combined 25 points for the Mountaineers, now 25-7.
Chauncey Collins led TCU with 18 points – nine of those coming from the free throw line, Trent scored 15, J.D. Miller had 12 and Vlad Brodziansky added 11 for the Horned Frogs, which finishes their season with a 12-21 overall record.
TCU got into tonight’s game by upsetting Texas Tech last evening.
“West Virginia is a very good basketball team,” said TCU coach Trent Johnson. “They wore us down. I thought their multiple pressure caused us to make some ill-advised decisions. And they did a really good job of putting a lot of pressure on Chauncey, putting a lot of pressure on Malique – our two primary ball handlers – and forced our fours and fives to handle the ball.”
“Unfortunately we weren’t deep enough,” added Collins. “They had bodies, us due to injuries and other things, we just didn’t have as many bodies as them, so we were wore down.”
West Virginia will face the winner of tonight’s Oklahoma-Iowa State game in the second semifinal-round game tomorrow night at 8 p.m. ET.
ESPN2 will televise the game nationally.
West Virginia Postgame Notes: West Virginia won its first game in the Phillips 66 Big 12 Men’s Basketball Championship ... Coach Bob Huggins improved to 8-7 in conference championship play at WVU ... WVU won its first conference tournament game since defeating Georgetown in the finals of the 2010 Big East Championship ... Huggins improved to 39-17 in conference tournaments ... WVU has reached the semifinals in four of its nine conference tournaments under Huggins ... Huggins picked up his 200th career victory at WVU. He has the second-most wins at WVU behind Gale Catlett’s 459 ... The TCU win now gives Huggins 790 for his career. He needs 16 more to tie Eddie Sutton for eighth place in all-time wins ... WVU’s win against TCU was the 25th of the season, matching last year’s win total. WVU finished 25-10 last year ... WVU has won five in a row and has improved to 31-20 in March under Huggins ... Devin Williams had 18 points and 13 rebounds, his 14th double-double of the season. He now has 31 for his career, moving into ninth place all-time at WVU in career double-doubles ... Williams moved into 41st place in career scoring at WVU. He now shows 1,082 career points ... Jevon Carter’s 15 points was the first time he reached double figures since the Kansas game on June 12 ... WVU’s 11 3-point field goals was its second highest of the season. WVU had 15 against UL Monroe in December ... WVU improved to 9-0 all-time against TCU. All nine of those meetings have come since both teams joined the Big 12 in 2012 ... The Mountaineers have won 40 of their last 41 games when holding opponents to 69 points or less ... WVU has made at least one 3-point field goal in 555 consecutive games ... Jonathan Holton now has 108 offensive rebounds this season, tying him for fourth place at WVU for offensive rebounds in a season.
- Compiled by Bryan Messerly
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