Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – A strong second half propelled West Virginia to a 74-55 victory over Bellarmine Tuesday night at the WVU Coliseum.
 
Bellarmine, making its first-ever appearance at the Coliseum, has made the rounds of some of the best teams in college basketball so far this year. The Atlantic Sun Conference members have already played games at No. 2 Purdue, No. 3 Gonzaga and No. 5 UCLA.
 
Tonight, the Knights hung with West Virginia in the first half, leading 12-11 at one point, but the Mountaineers' bench and constant ball pressure eventually wore them down.
 
"They're hard guard," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said afterward. "They do a great job of passing, cutting and ball faking and defensively they play some semblance of a Pack Line, which is hard to get easy shots off of.
 
"We started off slow and kind of struggled and then got better and better as the game went on until we unloaded the bench," added Huggins, now at 906-383 in his 40^th season of coaching.
 
Taz Sherman led West Virginia with 18 points on an economical 7 of 12 shooting. Sean McNeil, who was enrolled briefly at Bellarmine before transferring to Sinclair Community College, contributed 14 on 6 of 14 shooting while forward Jalen Bridges came close to getting a double-double with 8 points and nine rebounds.
 
"I thought (Bridges) was far and away our best defender tonight," Huggins said.
 
The Mountaineers used a 12-2 run to flip a one-point deficit to a nine-point lead in the first half, and then used a 22-9 run over the first 10 minutes of the second half to blow the game open.
 
Huggins said ball movement was the key to West Virginia's big run.
 
 "We dribbled it more than we passed it, and when you are playing against that kind of defense you dribble it you are going to have 10 eyes on you and you're not going to get it to the rim with 10 eyes on you," Huggins said. "When we started to pass the ball when they had to turn their head and try and find the ball and the man that's when we started to score."
 
West Virginia's biggest lead was 29 with 2:40 to go when Huggins emptied his bench.
 
Bellarmine (2-6) scored the game's remaining 10 points.
 
Thirteen different West Virginia players got into the game and 11 scored as the Mountaineers' bench outscored Bellarmine's 28 to 7. 
 
For the first time this year, WVU had a sizable advantage on the glass by outrebounding the Knights 41 to 31. Eighteen of those came on the offensive glass with Dimon Carrigan grabbing six boards in eight minutes and guard Kedrian Johnson pulling down five.
 
"We're getting a little better but we still stand behind and watch too much," Huggins said. "When the ball is in the air that's when you really ought to get inside and get good position and we still ball watch too much."
 
Bellarmine shot 40.4% overall, and just 2-of-17 from 3 and also turned the ball over 14 times.
 
Guard Dylan Penn reached his season's scoring average of 16 points, but 12 of those came in the second half once the outcome was already decided.
 
Curt Hopf contributed 12, while Juston Betz and C.J. Fleming scored 10 each for Bellarmine.
 
West Virginia improves to 6-1 with tonight's victory and now looks ahead to a Saturday afternoon clash with Radford, now coached by former Mountaineer standout guard Darris Nichols. It will be one of the rare instances when a former WVU player is coaching against his alma mater in the Coliseum.
 
Fred Schaus once did it when he coached the Purdue Boilermakers to a 90-79 victory against his former WVU player Joedy Gardner on Dec. 6, 1975. Huggins also played in that game.
 
The Highlanders recently knocked off Eastern Kentucky 88-75 and will bring a 4-4 record into Morgantown. Most recently, Radford defeated Kentucky Christian 79-70 earlier tonight.
 
Tickets remain on sale and can be purchased by logging on to WVUGAME.com.