Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – No. 15 West Virginia got a career-high 23 points from Deuce McBride to outlast pesky South Dakota State 79-71 in its season-opening game in the Bad Boy Mowers Crossover Classic at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
 
McBride, a sophomore from Cincinnati, made 9-of-19 field goal attempts and all four of his free throw attempts. 
 
"The main part of my game has been pull-up jumpers and get to the foul line," McBride said. "I just relied on it and the shots went in."
 
Junior guard Sean McNeil overcame a 1-for-7 shooting start to finish with a career-high 16, ending the night making 5 out of his final 9 field goal attempts.
 
Taz Sherman contributed 14 points on 4-of-9 shooting coming off the bench.
 
Derek Culver pulled down a game-high 14 rebounds, but West Virginia's advantage on the glass was only 41-39.
 
Oscar Tshiebwe got into early foul trouble and finished with just 7 points and three rebounds in 14 minutes of action.
 
"The way they play kind of led to a lot of long rebounds because everything is so much penetrate and pitch and shooting 3s," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. "It was different kind of rebounding than what we're kind of used to."
 
Douglas Wilson led the Jackrabbits with 17 points and Noah Freidel added 16. SDSU was picked by many to win the Summit Conference this year.
 
"I think they're really good," Huggins said. "They are extremely well coached. They make shots. They really do a good job of handling the ball and creating shots for one another."
 
West Virginia (1-0) struggled out the outset to make open shots and trailed 19-14 following Wilson's three-point play. The Mountaineers used an 8-3 run to tie the game at 22, and eventually took a 25-24 lead on Sherman 3 from the right wing with 6:36 left in the first half.
 
McNeil's first three with 3:31 remaining gave the Mountaineers a four-point advantage and a McBride three-point play with 38 seconds left boosted the margin to seven, 37-30.
 
"We are a team that likes to throw the ball close and they did a really good job of packing it in and really taking away our post play," Huggins said. "I think they are a lot better than what our guys thought they were and we really didn't get a whole lot of a scout. When I watch their games I was like, 'Wow, these guys are good.'"
 
West Virginia's biggest lead of the game was 12, 52-40, with 14:37 remaining, but SDSU quickly whittled it to six. WVU's margin remained in the six-point range until a Wilson layup with 5:56 to go reduced it to four, 68-64. 
 
WVU's lead was four again with 1:50 left when Wilson converted another layup and added a free throw after he was fouled by Gabe Osabuohien while driving to the basket.
 
Osabuohien answered a with a big baseline bucket and McNeil tacked on another field goal with 23 seconds left to push the margin back to eight.
 
West Virginia was just 8-of-32 from 3 and finished the game 30-of-77 overall for 39%. SDSU was 27-of-62 for 43.5% and outscored WVU 34-28 in the paint.
 
"They did a really good job of packing in their defense and not allowing easy passes into the post," Sherman said. "That's usually our bread and butter and they forced us to take shots we usually wouldn't take even though we have good shooters. Without Oscar in foul trouble that's a big hit it basically had us to figure out how we were going to score. That's when me, Deuce and Sean came in to help uplift the scoring."
 
"When you take out Oscar you have to rely on different things, especially because they were packing it in so well and were playing really solid on defense," McBride added. "A lot of the shots I think we can make, they just didn't go in today."
 
West Virginia will continue play tomorrow afternoon at 2:30 ET against the winner of tonight's Utah State-VCU game on ESPN.