Big 12 Tournament: Dismal Shooting Dooms Mountaineers As Texas Dumps WVU 66 - 49

Going into this game, it was impossible to avoid the statistics from the first two regular season games between the Longhorns and Mountaineers.  Texas had dominated on the glass, gathering 34 more rebounds than West Virginia. The men in burnt orange had also outscored the old gold and blue by 38 points in the paint.

Surely, WVU could make this third game competitive.  After all, the Mountaineers had just beaten mighty Kansas and was looking to make a deep Big 12 Championship run to earn an NCAA Tournament bid.  Huggins would fix the mistakes that plagued the team in the first two meetings.  And, it's hard to beat a team three times in the same season.

What WVU fans failed to take into consideration, was that the rims in Kansas City would be playing for the Texas defense for the majority of the game.  That is really the only explanation for what we witnessed Thursday night.  To give anyone who missed the game an idea of how bad things were for WVU, here are some *ahem* "highlights" from the game:

• At 11:56 in the first half, Brandon Watkins scored the second basket for WVU, and also his second, to put WVU behind 19-4.
• At 8:54 we scored our 6^th point.
• Then, at  8:36 Staten scores the 8^th.
• With 1:39 we made it 13 (just above the total for lowest points in a half this season).
• At the end of the first half, WVU had scored 14 points and was down 35-14 on 6 of 33 shooting.   Up to that point, 27 was our previous low for a half, and for much of the second half, it didn't look like we would surpass that total.
• With approximately 15:30 left in the second half, Nathan Adrian drained a 3 to put the Mountaineers over 20 and down 46-22.
• With 9:52 Terry Henderson made his first points of the game and gave WVU 24.
• WVU then went on a scoring tear and outscored itself 25-24 for a total of 49 points.

Juwan Staten was forced to leave the game early after turning an ankle while trying to drive to the basket, an unfortunate end to a great Big 12 season for the West Virginia point guard.

While Texas was always a bad matchup for WVU,  I don't think anyone expected this performance.  To say it was a bad night for the Mountaineers would not begin to describe the debacle that was this game.  For most of the game, all Huggins could do was shake his head in disbelief.  Hopefully, the team will get a chance to bounce back from this loss in the NIT, or the always illustrious CBI.

Here's a look at the final game stats: