Miscues Lead to Six-Point Defeat

Friday, November 16

Conway, S.C.

9:00 p.m.

West Virginia University

1-2

Western Kentucky

3-1

Western Kentucky

West Virginia

Photo by: Joe Faraoni ESPN images

November 17, 2018 12:06 AM | Men's Basketball

Box Score Box Score

By: John Antonik

Western Kentucky made just enough plays down the stretch to outlast West Virginia 63-57 and advance to tomorrow night's championship game of the Myrtle Beach Invitational played at Coastal Carolina's HTC Center in Conway, South Carolina.

Neither team shot the ball well, Western Kentucky making 32 percent of its field goal attempts and West Virginia just 33, but the Hilltoppers feasted on Mountaineer turnovers and fouls.

West Virginia mishandled the basketball 22 times and sent WKU to the free throw line 34 times where it converted 27 - 12 more than West Virginia's 15 free throws made.

"We go to the line 19 times and they go to the line 34 – but we shoot half of our shots from 3," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said on his postgame radio show. "You're not going to win doing that."

The Mountaineers (1-2) struggled all night getting good looks on the offensive end of the floor and when they did pass the ball enough to get an open shot it was usually a 3. WVU missed 19 of the 25 it attempted which led to numerous runout opportunities for Western Kentucky.

Starting forwards Sagaba Konate and Esa Ahmad were a combined 0-for-6 from behind the arc, while backup forward Wesley Harris also missed both triples he tried.

Lamont West was 1-for-6 and guard Beetle Bolden was the only player to make more than one, hitting two of the five he tried. But Bolden turned the ball over five times and every player who got into the game turned the ball over at least once, with the exception of West.

Despite this, West Virginia battled back from six points down to tie the game at 57 on Konate's free throw with 1:26 remaining.

But Desean Murray answered with a dunk and another empty possession from West Virginia resulted in two more Western Kentucky free throws. Jared Savage made both, putting the Hilltoppers ahead 61-57 with 31 seconds to go.

Two missed 3s by Bolden and Ahmad led to more Western Kentucky free throws and its third victory of the season.

Charles Bassey and Taveion Hollingsworth led four double-figure scorers with 13 each, while Josh Anderson scored 12 and Savage added 11.

Ahmad led West Virginia with 12 and Bolden finished with 10.

"I told our guys before the game, 'We've got to move people. We can't let them be inside of us. We're not athletic enough to jump over people or use quickness to run around them.' And the first half we moved the ball pretty good," Huggins said. "Consequently we rebounded it, we got pretty good shots, we got to the free throw line and we did what you need to do to win a game.

"In the second half, we just jacked it."

West Virginia began the game with an early 8-2 advantage and led 35-33 at halftime. However, WVU began the second half with turnovers on back to back possessions and turned it over 10 more times during the second 20 minutes.

"We've got to be averaging more than 20 turnovers a game – and it doesn't seem to bother them," Huggins said. "I've taken them out. I've ran them in practice. We just have no value of the basketball whatsoever."

WVU will have a day off before concluding play down in Myrtle Beach on Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. in the consolation game against old Atlantic 10 Conference foe St. Joseph's, which lost to Central Florida earlier this evening.

The game will be televised nationally on ESPN2.