Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Derek Culver didn't get the start today, but he was on the floor when it counted to help West Virginia hold off pesky Rhode Island 86-81 in an entertaining Sunday afternoon college basketball game at the WVU Coliseum.
 
Culver came off the bench to score a career-high 25 points and grab 11 rebounds to offset Fats Russell's game-high 32 points for the Rams.
 
Russell, a 5-10, 165-pound sophomore guard, almost singlehandedly erased West Virginia's 11-point halftime lead. The Philadelphia resident made 14-of-25 field goal attempts and his jumper with 10 minutes to go pulled the Rams to within a basket, 60-58.
 
Jermaine Haley missed at the other end and guard Jeff Dowtin tied the game on a driving layup.
 
Forward Oscar Tshiebwe quickly unknotted things by scoring two of his 11 points, all of them coming late in the second half. Tshiebwe was also one rebound shy of registering another double-double.
 
Haley scored the first eight points for the Mountaineers and then added 10 more in the second half, including a huge 3 with 5:38 left with the shot clock down to one and West Virginia only leading 67-64. 
 
Haley was also the guy coach Bob Huggins went to with 34 seconds left and the Mountaineers clinging to an 82-81 lead.
 
Haley was able to use his size to get into scoring position close to the basket to score with 12 seconds left.
 
"Earlier in the game we ran those guys off a double stagger and we didn't do a very good job of getting him the ball," Huggins said. "We were just going to curl Jermaine back and get him above that first screen and then screen his guy. Actually, we didn't get him the ball quick enough. If we'd have gotten the ball to him a little quicker it wouldn't have been as hard of a shot as it ended up being."
 
Rhode Island's Tyrese Martin made a bad pass trying to get the ball to Russell for a potential game-tying 3 and WVU regained possession of the basketball with three seconds left. 
 
Huggins subbed in two of his better free throw shooters, Sean McNeil and Jordan McCabe, who was fouled by Russell when play resumed.
 
McCabe made both free throws as West Virginia finished the game 24-of-31 from the line for 73.9 percent. That offset a 44.6-percent shooting effort from the floor, despite the Mountaineers having a distinct size advantage in the paint.
 
"(Free throw shooting) needed to be a little better at the end," Huggins said. "When come out of a two-shot foul situation and a two-shot technical foul going only 2-for-4, so we needed to be better than that."
 
Culver, just a 31.1 percent shooter coming into today's game, hit 9-of-17 from the floor and forward Emmitt Matthews Jr. also converted half of his field goal attempts (5-of-10) – all of them coming in the first half when he scored 14.
 
Huggins said afterward that he thought his team was a little sluggish coming off the long trip to Cancun, Mexico, earlier this week.
 
"We just didn't have that pop," he said. "It was a long trip back and we didn't much Friday. We just went through a little bit of their stuff because I wanted them to have legs and yesterday we went through everything full speed and I just didn't think we came out today with that same kind of energy that we had before."
 
Cyril Langeville scored 14 and Martin finished with 10 for the Rams, now 5-3 with all three of their losses coming on the road at Maryland, LSU and now West Virginia.
 
Rhode Island shot 60 percent in the second half and finished the game at 48.5 percent.
 
West Virginia, which destroyed Wichita State on the glass four nights ago in Cancun, Mexico, had just a six-rebound advantage today, 37-31.
 
Two of the five players on the floor for West Virginia late in the game were freshmen Tshiebwe and Miles McBride, who finished with 8 points and hit 4-of-6 from the foul line.
 
An announced crowd of 10,973 watched today's game.
 
"We've just got to keep getting better – and we will because we've got great kids," Huggins said. "That's a good sign."
 
It was Rhode Island's first appearance at the Coliseum since a 2004 NIT game. The Rams and Mountaineers were once regular foes from 1981 to 1995 when West Virginia was a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference.
 
"This is a game that we really needed to win," Huggins said. "To be able to do what we want to do you can't lose a non-conference game at home."
 
And it didn't.
 
Today's win gives West Virginia its first 7-0 start to a season since 2016 when the Mountaineers won their first seven games before dropping game No. 8 to Virginia at Madison Square Garden, which is where West Virginia is headed next Saturday afternoon to meet 6-2 St. John's in the inaugural Big East/Big 12 Battle. 
 
That contest will tip off at noon and will be televised nationally on FS1.
 
The Red Storm will play St. Peters on Tuesday night before facing the Mountaineers.