(Game highlights)
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia squandered a prime opportunity Tuesday against defending national champion Baylor.
Leading by two points with inside 8 minutes remaining, the Mountaineers faltered down the stretch and the fifth-ranked Bears outscored them 17-9 over the final 5:52 to pull away for a 77-68 victory before 12,692 at the Coliseum.
WVU’s inability to finish shots near the basket played a pivotal role in the outcome. The Mountaineers (13-4, 2-3) made only 7-of-22 layups and did not have a dunk, while the Bears converted 9-of-16 layups and five dunks.
“We hurt ourselves. We continually stub our toe when we miss an enormous amount of one footers and two footers around the rim,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said. “And it’s not like they have a great shot blocker. It’s more understandable if they have a great shot blocker. It’s been a habitual problem.”
The Bears led 53-48 with 11 minutes remaining, and the Mountaineers converted only 2-of-9 layups over the next 5 minutes, hindering their chances at a comeback.
“That’s something we have to fix,” WVU guard Sean McNeil said. “We can’t miss bunnies around the rim, especially in this type of game. I missed one myself and those are buckets you need. We needed some points on the board and we just didn’t get them.”
Still, when Gabe Osabuohien scored inside and made the free throw for a conventional three-point play at the 6:05 mark, West Virginia’s deficit was only 60-59.
But Matthew Mayer answered with a 3-pointer — one of his five triples — and following two missed free throws by Osabuohien, Adam Flager connected from beyond the arc to give Baylor (16-2, 4-2) a seven-point advantage with 5:19 remaining.
Bob Huggins postgame press conference
Malik Curry’s jump shot with 2:56 remaining ended a field goal drought of more than 3 minutes for the Mountaineers, who trailed 71-63 at that point.
Flager’s layup and a Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua dunk helped seal the verdict for the Bears, who avoided a three-game losing streak after starting the season with 15 straight wins.
“Basketball is a game of runs,” McNeil said. “That’s what it is. We’ve been doing better at realizing that. It’s always about how you respond. Unfortunately they made a run we couldn’t overcome tonight.”
Although Baylor played without James Akinjo, its top scorer and the Big 12 Conference’s leader in assists, the Bears got off to an exceptional start. They outscored the Mountaineers 22-5 over a span of 6:28 to turn a one-point deficit into the biggest lead for either team, 30-14.
During that stretch, Mayer made a trio of triples and scored 11 points, while Tchamwa Tchatchoua accounted for six points on three buckets.
“An elite player,” was McNeil’s description of Mayer. “He’s 6-9, can handle it, can shoot it, and has a little bit of post game, too.”
But the Mountaineers ran off 14 unanswered points over a span of 3:30 to cut their deficit to two. McNeil accounted for half of the points during WVU’s best stretch of the contest, including a fastbreak layup 4:24 before halftime that led to Baylor head coach Scott Drew calling timeout.
The Bears eventually settled for a 37-33 halftime lead.
McNeil’s 3-pointer 5:34 into the second half gave WVU a 48-45 advantage for its first lead since 9-8.
BU responded with eight straight points, getting triples from LJ Cryer and Mayer to quickly overcome its first deficit since the early stages.
Curry’s basket with 9:57 remaining brought the Mountaineers to within three and ended a scoring drought of more than 4 minutes that proved quite costly.
“We have some areas we have to improve on,” Huggins said. “We were horrible free throw shooters early and we’ve shot free throws pretty well here of late because guys are now coming in early and staying late shooting free throws.
“It’s kind of like I told them — I played the game my whole life until I got into coaching and I’ve coached for 40 years. It doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a game of neuromuscular integration and muscle memory. If you’re not in there doing it, you don’t give your muscles a chance to figure it out. It’s a game of repetition and it demands repetition. Until you give it that repetition, it’s not going to be very good for you.”
Curry followed up his 23-point performance in Saturday’s loss at Kansas with another strong effort, scoring 19 on 7-of-12 shooting to go with six rebounds.
“My confidence is definitely high,” Curry said. “I’ve been playing really well, but we lost two games, so I’m not doing enough. We’re not winning. If I play well, I play well, but at the end of the day, I want to win.”
McNeil finished with 17 points on 7-of-13 shooting, while Taz Sherman scored 18. Sherman made only 2-of-9 shots in the second half as he continues to try working his way back to full strength after missing the league opener at Texas while in COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
“He’s still not what he was. You can really see it with how good he was early and he would bounce it back at a guy, get the guy on his heels and all of a sudden, bam he’s in the air and making shots,” Huggins said. “He’s not doing that now. When you’re running up and down, the first thing that goes is your legs. When you’re coming off I guess a major sickness, it’s going to take some time. He’s not the Taz Sherman that we had at the beginning of the year.”
Cryer worked around three first-half fouls to play nearly all of the second half and led all players with 25 points, 19 of which he scored on 3s or free throws.
Mayer added 20 points and four steals, while Flagler contributed 14 points and seven assists. Tchamwa Tchatchoua finished with 10 points and seven boards.
Along with missing Akinjo, the Bears played without Jeremy Sochan, a freshman forward averaging nearly 8 points who missed his third straight game.
“Anytime you come to West Virginia, you have the students out there an hour and a half before hand and a packed arena, and coach Huggins, who is a Hall of Fame coach. You have to earn the win here, and I think as a staff we couldn’t be more proud of our team’s effort,” Drew said.
The loss was West Virginia’s first in 11 home games this season and marks the Mountaineers’ first losing streak of the season. They’ll attempt to avoid three straight losses at noon Saturday at No. 18 Texas Tech.
“We lost by nine, but in reality it was probably a closer game than that,” McNeil said. “We’ll prepare for Texas Tech and there’s no time to sulk. We have to get ready to play in Lubbock.”