COLUMBIA, Mo. — Though Missouri had the nation’s longest active home winning streak, WVU point guard Juwan Staten said “we definitely felt we had a team that could come in here and win.”
Turns out West Virginia didn’t have that kind of team Thursday night, especially during the game’s first 30 minutes, when Mizzou raced out to a 25-point lead. The Mountaineers recovered to make it a single-digit game in the final two minutes, but Staten said the hole was too deep.
The Tigers held on for an 80-71 victory and won their 23rd consecutive game at Mizzou Arena.
“I think we got away from the game plan a lot in that first half,” he said. “We fell down early and that made it hard to fight back at the end.”
Staten’s team-high 16-point performance was anything but satisfying: He made only 5-of-13 shots from the floor and committed five turnovers against five assists. That’s a far cry from the astonishing season-long ratio he carried into the night of 60 assists and nine turnovers.)
Click on the video to see all of Staten’s postgame comments.