Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Kansas State used a 19-2 run over a seven-minute stretch in the second half to pull away from West Virginia 65-51 here at the WVU Coliseum tonight.
 
The 23rd-ranked Wildcats, coming off a 14-point home loss to Iowa State on Saturday, maintained their first-place standing in the Big 12 against the last-place team in the league.
 
Yet with 11:55 remaining it was anyone's game with the score tied at 42. West Virginia had scored seven straight to force a Wildcat timeout, but when play resumed that's when K-State stepped on the gas.
 
A Makol Mawien dunk (he missed three others) began a 19-point Wildcat flurry to put this one away and give them their 20^thvictory of the season and 10^thin conference play.
 
"We had some breakdowns," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. "We were going to down ball screens on the side and we did a decent job downing them on the side. Then they started setting them in the middle of the floor and we were supposed to soft-hedge and we didn't. That's how Mawien got the wide-open dunk under the basket and I thought that one broke our back."
 
West Virginia's young team once again struggled to put together enough baskets to avoid another double-digit conference defeat – its eighth of the season and its third at the Coliseum.
 
The Mountaineers (10-16, 2-11) shot just 34.6 percent from the floor - the fourth straight sub-40-percent shooting night and their seventh in Big 12 play. West Virginia was five-of-23 from behind the arc and is now 14-of-78 (17.9 percent) from that distance in its last four games.
 
It was also the fourth straight game in which West Virginia scored 53 or fewer points.
 
"We just didn't make shots," Huggins said. "They made open shots and we didn't make open shots. That's the name of the game. That's basketball."
 
In the first half, WVU was able to stick around until the Wildcats switched to a zone defense and began playing Hack-a-Shaq on Mountaineer freshman center Derek Culver.
 
K-State's three centers Mawien, James Love III and Levi Stockard III combined to commit 11 fouls, sending Culver to the free throw line eight times where he made five.
 
"If this continues I don't know if Derek will have any arms left," Huggins said. "He competed his butt off and we've got to do a better job of him throwing the ball out of double teams and our other guys have got to do a better job of recognizing it."
 
The Youngstown, Ohio, resident scored 11 points and grabbed 13 rebounds for his sixth double-double of the season and his fifth straight double-digit rebounding performance. But the freshman was just three-of-nine from the floor and was unable to score through contact when he was fouled.
 
"Derek's a load in there and he got Maiwen in foul trouble early and they just kept throwing bigs at him," Huggins said. "He's going to have to learn to score the ball through contact. When I had (Danny) Forston and Kenyon (Martin) I spent a lot of time working with them scoring the ball through contact, but it was to get a free throw after the ball went in. That's what we've got to get to with him."
 
Junior Lamont West led the Mountaineers with 16 points while grabbing seven rebounds.
 
Brandon Knapper scored 10 while Emmitt Matthews Jr. added nine. 
 
"We need to be more consistent," Huggins said. "It's just hard for us getting anything close to the basket other than Derek."
 
Freshmen Knapper, Matthews Jr. and Culver were in tonight's starting lineup for the second straight game along with juniors West and Jermaine Haley. It's the 16^thdifferent starting lineup combination Huggins has used this season.
 
Kansas State got 21 points on seven-of-14 shooting from senior guard Barry Brown. In the two wins against West Virginia this year Brown scored 50 points.
 
Xavier Sneed added 19 on six-of-11 shooting while forward Dean Wade, who was questionable coming into tonight's game after injuring his foot in the Iowa State loss, contributed 10 points and six rebounds in 32 minutes of action.

Former Mountaineer Jevon Carter was among the 9,266 announced here for tonight's game. The Memphis Grizzlies guard had a couple days off during NBA all-star weekend before resuming play this Friday night.
 
West Virginia is back out on the road this Saturday at Baylor for a 2 p.m. game at the Ferrell Center.