Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Guard Miles McBride flirted with a triple-double in 11^th-ranked West Virginia's come-from-behind 80-71 victory over Georgetown Sunday afternoon in a Big 12-Big East Battle game played at McDonough Arena in Washington, D.C. 
 
The sophomore guard scored a team-high 17 points, grabbed seven rebounds and handed out seven assists in tonight's nine-point victory over West Virginia's former Big East rival.
 
Georgetown (1-2) led 34-32 at halftime and had a six-point lead with 13:33 left after a Timothy Ighoefe layup.
 
But McBride answered with a 3 to ignite a nine-point run that included a couple of dunks by Oscar Tshiebwe and Emmitt Matthews Jr., and some free throws by Tshiebwe.
 
With the scored tied at 62, Taz Sherman hit a big 3 and Derek Culver followed with a couple of free throws to build the margin to five. A defensive stop led to another Culver basket, and Sherman added two more to push the lead out to nine with 3:20 left.
 
The advantage swelled to 10 on Matthews' 3 from the right wing with 1:53 remaining.
 
That was Matthews' only 3 of the game, although he contributed a season-best 13 points to go with four rebounds.
 
"He was huge in the second half," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. "We've been on him to be a little more assertive in taking the ball at the rim and he obviously took at the rim a couple of times with a lot of strength. And I thought he also made a huge 3. The 3 that he made kind of put the game away for us."
 
At one point in the second half, Huggins had his team in a zone defense despite being primarily a man-to-man coach.
 
"We worked on it and we wanted to see how it would do against another team," Huggins explained. "We wanted to change the tempo a little bit. They were coming off those ball screens pretty hard at us and that kind of stopped some of those ball screen things. It's a work in progress, to say the least." 
 
Culver, despite early foul trouble, contributed 14 points and nine rebounds in just 18 minutes of action.
 
He finished with three fouls in a recurring early-season theme that has seen West Virginia's bigs continually getting into foul trouble. Oscar Tshiebwe finished with nine points and six rebounds despite his three fouls, and Gabe Osabuohien failed to score in a game in which he was saddled with four fouls.
 
West Virginia (4-1) shot 40.6% from the floor for the game, but connected on 16 of its 32 field goal attempts in the second half to outscore the Hoyas by 11 after intermission.
 
Georgetown got a game-high 19 points from guard Jahvon Blair. The senior hit 5-of-12 from 3-point distance as the Hoyas were 11-of-30 from behind the arc.
 
Jamorko Pickett added 11 points and eight rebounds.
 
Sherman once again provided a big spark coming off the bench with 12 points on 4-of-9 shooting. Jordan McCabe also gave West Virginia a boost off the bench with five points to spell McBride.
 
West Virginia outscored Georgetown at the free throw line 22 to 10 and also forced 15 Hoya turnovers resulting in a 21 to four advantage in points off turnovers.
 
Georgetown managed to hold its own on the glass by matching West Virginia's 43 rebounds.
 
"I didn't think we did a very good job in post defense and we didn't rebound the ball the way we need to rebound it," Huggins said.
 
West Virginia's victory today trimmed Georgetown's lead to one, 27-26, in a longtime series that dates back to 1922. West Virginia last played here in 2014 when it lost tyo the Hoyas in the first round of the NIT.
 
The Mountaineers will begin a three-game homestand against Robert Morris on Wednesday Dec. 9. WVU also has home games coming up against No. 19-ranked Richmond on Dec. 13 and then against Iowa State on Dec. 18 to tip off Big 12 play.
 
West Virginia University announced last week that no fans will be permitted to attend WVU home basketball games in the month of December as a result of the recent spike in COVID-19 cases in the Mountain State. 
 
West Virginia's non-conference game against the Colonials will tip off at 7 p.m. and will be televised on Bis 12 Now.