Sooners Pull Away From Mountaineers

Saturday, March 2

Norman, Okla.

2:00 p.m.

West Virginia University

11-18, 3-13

Oklahoma

18-11, 6-10

West Virginia

Oklahoma

Photo by: Scott Weaver

March 02, 2019 04:57 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score WVU-Oklahoma Box Score Bob Huggins Postgame Jermaine Haley Postgame Jordan McCabe Postgame Emmitt Matthews Jr. Postgame

By: John Antonik

Aaron Calixte and Jamai Bieniemy scored 22 points each to lead Oklahoma to a 92-80 victory over West Virginia the Lloyd Noble Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

The Sooners' 92 points were a season high in Big 12 play this year, besting its previous best by 16 points scored in a 76-74 home win over TCU on Jan. 12.

Today, Oklahoma shot a sizzling 59.2 percent from the floor by hitting 29 of its 49 field goal attempts. OU also hit 10-of-21 from 3-point distance for 47.6 percent.

Kristian Doolittle contributed 15 points and Brady Manek added 14 for Oklahoma, now 18-11 overall and 6-10 in conference play. Seven OU seniors were recognized before today's game.

"I didn't think we competed," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. "I thought this group, although not the most talented, was going to compete like our old guys but they didn't compete today.

"And it wasn't everybody, some guys gave us great effort but a few just didn't give us any effort," Huggins added.

West Virginia (11-18, 3-13) got a season-high 23 points from Jermaine Haley, who was coming off an 18-point performance earlier this week in the triple-overtime win against TCU. Haley has now scored 54 points in his last three games.

Freshman point guard Jordan McCabe added 18 points to go with his season-high 25 scored on Tuesday night against the Horned Frogs. Like Haley, McCabe has produced double digits in his last three games.

Freshman Derek Culver went for nine points and nine rebounds while freshman Emmitt Matthews Jr. grabbed a game-best 10 rebounds. He added eight points.

"I thought Emmitt was good in the first half and then he got tired," Huggins said. "He was out of gas."

Culver was just two-of-eight from the floor as Oklahoma chose to do what other teams have done by playing Culver physically whenever he gets the ball in the paint.

"Derek is getting frustrated and I'd get frustrated too if I were him," Huggins said. "I don't know how it's possible that you allow what people do to him and it's not just today. It was the last game, the game before that and the game before that … He's 260 pounds and he's the strongest guy in the gym so it takes an effort to knock him down."

After leading by eight early in the game, a five-minute field goal drought to end the first half doomed the Mountaineers.

Oklahoma used as 17-3 run to finish the first half with a 42-28 advantage.

"Our biggest problem is we make mistakes in clusters," Huggins said. "We don't have 17 turnovers and they're spaced out. We do it in a cluster and then to compound that, we don't make open shots."

West Virginia began the game hitting six of its first eight field goal attempts before ending the half going just four-of-21.

The Mountaineers recovered to shoot 48.5 percent in the second half to bring their shooting percentage up to 41.9 percent for the game.

OU had a 30-19 advantage in bench scoring and a 16-6 edge in fast break points off of 17 Mountaineer turnovers.

"Fundamentally we're just so bad and those are things we're going to work on this summer and we're going to work on when we go to Spain and then in the preseason so this doesn't happen again," Huggins said.

Christian James, Oklahoma's leading scorer with an average of 15.4 points per game, scored just seven today while Lamont West, one of two double figure scorers for WVU, made just one 3-point field goal before fouling out with 7:52 remaining in the game.

Oklahoma's biggest lead was 24 points, 67-43, before West Virginia made wholesale substitutions and those players battled back to make it a nine-point game on a McCabe 3 with 2:30 left.

"I thought they played hard," Huggins said, "but lack of effort is inexcusable."

The Mountaineers are now winless in nine conference road games this year.

West Virginia returns to the Coliseum for its final home game of the year on Wednesday night against Iowa State before wrapping up the regular season on the road at Oklahoma State next Saturday afternoon. Both teams are fighting to avoid a 10^thplace regular season finish with 3-13 league records after today's action.