Box Score MORGANTOWN. W.Va. – Bob Huggins said Friday that his West Virginia basketball team's resume was already good enough to get into the NCAA Tournament. After today's 89-81 victory over 11^th-ranked Kansas State at the WVU Coliseum, is there really any doubt? 
 
"We're not done yet," Bob Huggins, wearing a white ball cap with the words 'NCAA bound' written on the side, said during his postgame radio show. "We're looking forward to going to Kansas City, winning games in Kansas City, and then seeing who and where we're going to play in the NCAA Tournament."
 
West Virginia's three seniors - Erik Stevenson, Emmitt Matthews Jr. and Kedrian Johnson - combined to score 70 of the Mountaineers' 81 points today on Senior Day to give them their 18^th victory of the season and their seventh in Big 12 play.
 
Stevenson led all scorers with 27 points on 11-of-22 shooting. During the last two months of the regular season, the Saturday Stevenson has been terrific, the Lacey, Washington, resident tallying 31, 34, 27 and 27 in his last four Saturday Coliseum games.
 
Kedrian Johnson contributed 23 points in his head-to-head matchup against Kansas State point guard Markquis Nowell, while Matthews added 20 on 9-of-11 shooting.
 
Keyontae Johnson and Nowell led Kansas State with 24 points each. All 24 of Nowell's points came in the second half, including six long 3-pointers - a couple of those coming from about Cumberland, Maryland, distance.
 
West Virginia, trailing 28-18, used a 21-9 run over the final 8:22 of the first half to take a 39-37 halftime lead. The Wildcats shot 51.6% in the first half and got 10 fastbreak points off 12 Mountaineer turnovers.
 
But in the second half, WVU cleaned up its shaky ballhandling and clamped down on K-State's shooters. The Wildcats missed 22 of their 36 second half field goal attempts and turned the ball over eight times.
 
"I thought we forced things early and we set out to trap (Nowell), and that's hard to do, but we didn't guard around the goal as well as I hoped we would," Huggins said of his team's first-half issues. "To kind of shore that up we quit trapping, but Keedy did a terrific job on Nowell. He was excited to play against him.
 
"(Nowell) has gotten all of the accolades, and well deserved, but Keedy deserves quite a few accolades as well," Huggins added.
 
Kansas State was able to remain close in the second half because of its work on the offensive glass. The Wildcats grabbed eight offensive rebounds and it wasn't until 12:34 remaining that West Virginia recorded its first rebound of the second half, that coming from Tre Mitchell.
 
The difference in the game was West Virginia's second-half offensive efficiency, the Mountaineers making 15 of their 26 second-half field goal attempts while connecting on 16 of 18 from the foul line.

"We moved them a lot more," Huggins explained. "If you let them stand there everybody kind of knows what everyone is doing and they guard a lot better. We got their bigs away from the goal and that open up some drives from the corner."
 
A key sequence in the game came with 10:34 left and West Virginia leading just 61-57. 
 
Nowell picked Kedrian Johnson's pocket at midcourt and had a clear path to the basket for a driving layup, which would have reduced WVU's lead to two. But Johnson didn't give up on the play, blocked Nowell's layup attempt, resulting in an offensive possession for the Mountaineers that led to Stevenson banging in a 3 to put them ahead 64-57. That was a five-point swing in a span of just 14 seconds.
 
"The layup would have been big for them," Huggins admitted. "The block was terrific for us, and from where I was, it was a block. He got it before it hit the (glass)."
 
Another Stevenson 3 two minutes later gave West Virginia a 69-59 lead, and the margin swelled to 14 on two Matthews free throws with 5:11 left. The Mountaineers' biggest lead was 15 points, twice at 4:31 and 2:40.
 
West Virginia (18-13, 7-11) finished the game shooting 50.8% overall with a 30-to-20 advantage in fastbreak points. 
 
Kansas State (23-8, 11-7) cooled off to 44.8% while committing 20 turnovers for the game.
 
Prior to today's game, West Virginia recognized its six senior players Johnson, Matthews, Stevenson, Jimmy Bell Jr., Tre Mitchell and Joe Toussaint during an on-court ceremony.
 
Mitchell contributed 14 while Toussaint added a late basket and a free throw. The only other player to score for West Virginia was reserve forward Patrick Suemnick.
 
"Congratulations to (the seniors), they won the game," Huggins said. "It's like my dad used to say, 'Y-all go out there and do all the work, I'm just like the old dog that sits on the side and barks.' Emmitt and I have been close for quite a while and I told him, 'Damn, I'm glad you came back.'"
 
The win over the Wildcats, 17^th in the NCAA NET rankings, gives West Virginia a sixth Quad 1 victory and should push the Mountaineers close to 20 in the final regular season NET rankings.
 
As far as the Big 12 standings go, a Texas Tech win over Oklahoma State in Lubbock later today would give West Virginia the No. 7 seed in the upcoming Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City next week. That would mean a first-round matchup against Oklahoma in the 7-10 game. If Oklahoma State wins, then West Virginia and Texas Tech will square off in the 8-9 game. 
 
WVU heads into postseason play having won three of its last four with two of those being Quad 1 wins.

"People are saying they're on the bubble," Kansas State coach Jerome Tang said. "That's everybody outside of the Big 12 who says there's a Big 12 team on the bubble, because any team in our league is an NCAA Tournament team and can win games in the NCAA Tournament.

"There's nothing like this. This is my 20th year in this league and it's never been this good from top to bottom," Tang added. "Unfortunately, we beat each other up. Pittsburgh is tied for first in the ACC, and (West Virginia) beat them by (25). Alabama lost at OU by (24). We just have really good teams in our league."
 
Today's victory was also West Virginia's 600^th in the history of the 52-year-old WVU Coliseum, and many of the 14,111 sticking around to listen to Huggins' postgame radio show on the public address system were treated to a montage of highlights on the video board.
 
Today's sellout means West Virginia's average attendance was 12,004 for the season, marking only the fourth time the Mountaineers have averaged more than 12,000 in Coliseum history.
 
The other three years were in 2010, 2018 and 2020.