Any chance West Virginia had of hanging with seventh-ranked had essentially vanished midway through the first half.<\/p>\n
After putting together one of its better offensive performances this season in a win Saturday over Kansas, the Mountaineers were held to two field goals and five points over the first 15-plus minutes Tuesday night at the Fertitta Center. In turn, the Cougars led by as much as 23 in the opening half and never trailed in a resounding 77-48 victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to get off to good starts. Ironically, I thought we had a couple looks early,\u201d WVU head coach Ross Hodge said on postgame radio. \u201cYou get to the foul line and miss both. You turn the corner a couple times and have layups at the basket when you had them spread out and kind of short arm it. Even Honor [Huff], in that first 10-minute stretch, had a couple clean looks. Then you do start feeling the squeeze and playing a little faster. They\u2019re an elite defense and team, and elite defenses make it to when you finally do get an open shot, you rush it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Houston (16-1, 4-0) improved to 38-4 within the Big 12 since joining the league ahead of the 2023-24 season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Cougars struggled scoring for long stretches of the first half themselves, making 5-of-17 shots and 2-of-12 three-pointers over the first 11:30.<\/p>\n
But while WVU (11-6, 2-2) generated enough stops to hang in, the visitors were unable to find any offensive rhythm against one of the better defensive teams in college basketball. It marked WVU\u2019s lowest point total since a 39-point effort in a 2015 loss to Kentucky in the Sweet 16.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Cougars ran off 13 consecutive points after leading 15-5, including three-pointers from Milos Uzan and Chris Cenac Jr. over a 56-second stretch. Another three from Emanuel Sharp made it 26-5, before two free throws from Chase McCarty left UH with its largest first-half advantage at the 5:05 mark.<\/p>\n
After missing 14 of its first 16 shots, West Virginia scored six points in 39 seconds on separate triples from Treysen Eaglestaff and DJ Thomas, and the Mountaineers totaled 13 points over the final 4:30 of the opening half to trail 33-18 at the break.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe responded well. We wanted to get it to 12 or 15 at the half and we got it to 15,\u201d Hodge said.<\/p>\n
Mountaineer center Harlan Obioha was limited to three first-half minutes after picking up separate fouls in 21 seconds to start the contest.<\/p>\n
Despite trailing by 20 1:09 into the second half, WVU battled back with nine straight points and was to within 11 with 15:41 remaining when Brenen Lorient accounted for one of his two field goals.<\/p>\n
Houston was in front 48-34 with inside 12 minutes remaining, and then scored 17 straight points in less than 4 minutes, capped by an Isiah Harwell triple that left the Mountaineers facing a 31-point deficit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re going to come here and beat a team like this, you have to have special performances from multiple people, and we didn\u2019t have that tonight,\u201d Hodge said.<\/p>\n
The Cougars made half of their 32 field-goal attempts in the second half and shot 43 percent for the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Uzan led four Houston players in double figures with 17 points. Sharp followed with 13 and Kingston Flemings and Joseph Tugler contributed 10 apiece.<\/p>\n
Cenac Jr. snatched a game-high 10 rebounds to help the Cougars win the board battle, 38-29.<\/p>\n
Thomas was a bright spot in defeat and scored a team-high 16 points on 6-for-8 shooting. He made 4-of-5 threes, including three in an 11-point first half.<\/p>\n
\u201cDJ really saved us in the first half,\u201d Hodge said. \u201cBoth back cuts, he went and dunked it and that\u2019s what you have to do here. You can\u2019t be trying to flip balls around the basket. They\u2019re so physical and have such great length then when you do get it close you better dunk it, so it was good to see that from him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Honor Huff scored 13 in defeat, but was held to 4 for 11 shooting, including 2 of 9 from long range.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was their defense,\u201d Hodge said. \u201cSharp is one of the best perimeter defenders in the country. He\u2019s physical and fast. He\u2019s 2 for 9 and there were probably three clean looks Honor got in the first half. Other than that, they made it hard on him. That\u2019s where other guys have to be able to pick up some slack and help him. We had pockets of it at times, but not consistent enough throughout the course of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
No other Mountaineer had more than seven points, while Chance Moore and Jasper Floyd were scoreless.<\/p>\n
WVU was responsible for 15 of 22 turnovers in the game and fell to 0-6 away from home this season.<\/p>\n
The Cougars have won all four meetings with the Mountaineers, while never allowing more than 55 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told the team after the game, our togetherness and support from the team was good enough,\u201d Hodge said, \u201cbut the actual fight from five guys on the floor wasn\u2019t good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Any chance West Virginia had of hanging with seventh-ranked had essentially vanished midway through the first half. After…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":514832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[4345,358,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-514831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-texas","10":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115891907068177563","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}