Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia got a career-high 28 points from junior Jermaine Haley and another outstanding 18-point, five-assist effort from emerging freshman point guard Jordan McCabe to knock off 25^th-ranked Iowa State 90-75 here at the WVU Coliseum Wednesday night.
 
Haley, a 5.1 points-per-game scorer who has produced 69 points in West Virginia's last three games, made 13-of-20 from the floor, mostly on drives to the basket. 
 
He also converted two-of-four from 3-point range while grabbing seven rebounds and handing out three assists.
 
"(Assistant coach) Erik (Martin) did the scouting report and he kept emphasizing to them in practice that he thought if we pushed the ball we could score in transition," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. "Jermaine did a great job pushing the ball."
 
McCabe's 18 points all came from downtown, his final 3 coming with 9:02 remaining in the game right after the Cyclones had reduced their 21-point halftime deficit to 10 on Zoran Talley Jr.'s transition basket. McCabe's big 3, from well beyond the arc, stopped Iowa State's 10-3 run in its tracks.
 
Soon, West Virginia pushed its lead back to 17 after Lamont West's five-point flurry. West bounced back from a disappointing performance last Saturday at Oklahoma by scoring 12 points and grabbing a season-high 12 rebounds – his first double-double since last year's NCAA Tournament victory over Marshall when he got 18 points and 10 boards.
 
Freshman forward Derek Culver produced his eighth double-double of the season with 15 points and 11 boards.
 
West Virginia outrebounded Iowa State 44-34, had a 15 to 11 edge in assists and the turnovers were negated at 14 each.
 
"It's about getting possessions," Huggins said. "I think the turnovers were even, so we got 10 more possessions (because of the rebounding advantage) and that's what you try to do. That's what we tried to do with our press was just get more possessions."
 
The Mountaineers (12-18, 4-13) shot a sizzling 57.5 percent in the first half (23-of-40) and finished the game at 47.8 percent, well above the 41 percent they are shooting for the season.
 
WVU used a 12-0 run at the midway point in the first half to turn a 20-18 deficit into a 30-20 lead, forcing Iowa State coach Steve Prohm to use one of two timeouts he called during a six-minute span. 
 
His first one came after the Mountaineers took an early 14-10 lead.
 
"We scored the ball really well the first 10 minutes, didn't guard anybody, and then the last 10 minutes weren't good offensively or defensively," Prohm said. "And that was obviously where we lost the game."
 
Iowa State (20-10, 9-8), which has dropped four of its last five, tonight looked like a completely different team than the one that ran West Virginia right out of Hilton Coliseum back on Jan. 30.
 
That night, the Cyclones shot 54.5 percent from the floor and wore West Virginia out on transition baskets. This evening, Iowa State shot just 43.8 percent from the floor and managed to outscore WVU just 10 to 4 on fast break points.
 
"This three-week stretch has been tough for us for a couple of reasons," Prohm said. "We just have to figure out how to get through it, and that's the bottom line."
 
The Mountaineers looked like a completely different team as well, which Huggins noted afterward.
 
"We're playing guys now that we didn't play before," he said. "We're a totally different team. We play a bunch of young guys that like each other and play well together and want to win."
 
West Virginia's 55 first half points were more than it scored for an entire 40 minutes during a four-game stretch in early February when it absorbed blowout losses to Texas Tech, Texas, Kansas and Kansas State.
 
Since then, the Mountaineers have scored 104, 80 and 90 points in their last three games while going 2-1 over that stretch.
 
WVU concludes the regular season with a 10-6 record at the Coliseum. The Mountaineers are also 2-3 in neutral site games, but they are still seeking their first road win of the season.
 
"We have to win one," Huggins said of his team's road woes. "That's pretty simple. You don't have any idea how hard a year it's been, and for them. They're playing and then, guys come back. Then they're not play. You don't know who your teammates are. I give them all the credit in the world for hanging in there."
 
They will get an opportunity to get their first road victory on Saturday afternoon at Oklahoma State to wrap up the regular season. The Mountaineers are a half-game ahead of the 3-13 Cowboys in the league standings (Oklahoma State is playing at Baylor tonight).
 
OSU defeated West Virginia 85-77 in Morgantown back on Jan. 12.
 
The way things look right now one week before the start of the 2019 Phillips 66 Big 12 Championships in Kansas City is that West Virginia will likely be facing either TCU or Oklahoma in a first-round tournament game on Wednesday night at the Sprint Center.
 
No. 10 plays No. 7 and No. 9 faces No. 8 on opening night. The rest of the tournament field will play on Thursday.
 
"It's a hell of a league," Huggins said. "Oklahoma was struggling, and they might be the best team in the league right now (following Tuesday night's blowout win over Kansas). They're playing lights out. They went on a 13-1 run against us. It was a pretty good game and then we couldn't catch them."
 
Last year, West Virginia reached the Big 12 Tournament championship game for the third straight year.
 
An announced crowd of 10,354 attended tonight's game. 
 
At the final timeout of the first half, longtime athletic equipment manager Bubba Schmidt was recognized for his 42 years of dedicated service to Mountaineer basketball.
 
Schmidt will be retiring in June.