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West Virginia wins ugly—but by plenty—at Oklahoma State

West Virginia forward Devin Williams (41) dribbles the ball as Oklahoma State Cowboys forward Mitchell Solomon (41) defends during the first half at Gallagher-Iba Arena.

 

No. 14 West Virginia piled up twice as many turnovers as assists, never got its transition game revving and shot well below its season average.

Still, it had ample ammunition to throttle short-handed Oklahoma State 70-56 on Saturday in Stillwater.

Devin Williams finished with 13 points and 15 rebounds—combining with Jonathan Holton to  outrebound the entire Cowboys team—and Jaysean Paige made his usual array of difficult baskets in a 17-point effort as the Mountaineers  (22-7, 11-5) swept the season series.

BOXSCORE: West Virginia 70, Oklahoma State 56

Hours after Oklahoma’s dramatic fade against Texas, West Virginia took sole possession of second place in the Big 12—essentially the highest point teams in this league can aspire with Kansas now owning 12 consecutive titles.

Reserve Joe Burton scored a career-high 16 for Oklahoma State (12-17, 3-13), which once again received scant encouragement inside a two-thirds empty Gallagher Iba Arena. The announced attendance of 5,539 appeared dubious as Travis Ford’s team trailed for the final 21 minutes and absorbed its seventh home loss this season.

Paige’s only 3-pointer of the game started an 8-0 run that put West Virginia up 54-40, and the lead never shrank below nine again. On an 8-of-18 shooting day, Paige also hit a step-back 16-foot baseline jumper that seemingly reached punt altitude before splashing down.

PHOTOS: Gallery from Gallagher-Iba Arena

The Mountaineers shot only 37 percent and scored just two baskets over the final 11 minutes—one of those a putback dunk by Daxter Miles with 27 seconds left—relying on 16 free throws down the stretch to keep Oklahoma State at bay.

“I thought we played pretty hard but I didn’t think we played particularly well,” said Bob Huggins, who pulled a game ahead of Lefty Driesell for 10th place on the career wins list despite WVU finishing with 14 turnovers and only seven assists.

The Cowboys, sorely missing dynamic freshman point guard Jawun Evans and 3-point gunner Phil Forte, played with a seven-man rotation that kept Tyree Griffin on the court throughout. OSU’s only healthy scholarship point guard had seven points, four assists and nine of his team’s 20 turnovers.

“He had to play 40 minutes and that’s tough,” Huggins said. “Plus he had to work like heck just to get the ball and then some (defender) is trying to turn you. It’s fatiguing.

“They’re low on numbers. They don’t have subs and we made them work really hard.”

Williams did more tenacious work on the glass for his 13th double-double this season. Holton added 11 rebounds to give the duo 26, a majority of West Virginia’s 42-25 edge overall.

Oklahoma State shot 55 percent in the opening half only to trail 33-29. That dropped off to 28 percent over the final 20 minutes and top offensive threat Jeff Newberry ended the game 1-of-9 for five points, his second-fewest points in conference play.

“The turnovers were our Achilles heel. Rebounding was another Achilles heel,” said Ford, whose job security grows more tenuous with each loss. “We can’t turn the ball over. We’ve got to rebound the ball.

“You know me, I don’t usually talk much about making shots—that can come and go. But I told them ‘You’ve got to step up and make some shots now. That will help you because your defense the last two games has been off the charts, but our offense has let us down, the rebounding let us down a little bit.’”

Teyvon Myers, Jevon Carter and Nathan Adrian scored seven points each helping the starters match the reserves with 35 points each. Carter’s frigid shooting persisted with a 1-of-6 effort, though his lone basket was a scrambling 3-pointer that sparked WVU heading into the half.

Backup point guard Tarik Phillip made five free throws and failed to score a basket for the first time since the Bethune-Cookman game of Nov. 23. Phillip combined with Carter on 1-of-8 shooting, five turnovers and three assists, yet West Virginia easily ran its Big 12 road record to 5-3.

Foul-line disparity: During January’s game in Morgantown, Ford sounded displeased with his team being whistled for 28 fouls to WVU’s 23. This time OSU committed 26 to the visitors’ 24 and WVU outscored the Pokes 27-14 at the free-throw line.

“A team that traditionally fouls more than anyone else and they go to the line 37 times and we go 20? Figure that one out.

Stumping for Ford: After beating Oklahoma State for the fourth time in two seasons, Huggins sought to draw some of the heat away from the embattled Ford.

“Travis is doing a great job. When you think about losing the people that he’s lost, it’s crippling,” he said. “You lose two guys that are the quality of the guys that he’s lost for the year, it’s next to impossible to win games in this league. It’s a hard league when you have everybody and much less when you try to play without games you are building your team around.”

Oklahoma State is battling with TCU to avoid last place in the conference.

“When you take your two best players off your team in this league, it’s tough for anybody,” Ford said. “It doesn’t mean you fold your tent up, and I think you’ve seen that our team has a lot of fight to it. This league is just unforgiving. It’s not excuses, it’s reality. We’re in the games at halftime, we’ve just got to figure out the second half, to finish a game out.”





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