Mountaineers End Conference Slide at Cincinnati – West Virginia University Athletics

Javon Small scored a game-high 19 points and Joseph Yesufu contributed 16 points off the bench to lead West Virginia to a 63-50 victory at Cincinnati Sunday afternoon at Fifth Third Arena.
 
The reeling Bearcats, a preseason top 25 choice once ranked as high as 14^th earlier this year, has lost four straight conference games and is now 2-8 in Big 12 play.
 
West Virginia, sporting its 1959 Jerry West era throwback uniforms used in its 64-57 victory over Iowa State, snapped its three-game losing streak and now shows three league road victories at Kansas, Colorado and Cincinnati with another one coming up on Wednesday night at TCU. West Virginia’s Big 12 road record was 2-25 over the prior three seasons combined.
 
“This one feels a lot better,” a relieved West Virginia coach Darian DeVries said afterward.
 
Today, WVU also ended its recent trend of slow starts by building a 40-25 halftime lead, while also shooting much better from 3-point range, thanks to Yesufu going four-for-four and Small making four-of-seven.
 
Overall, West Virginia made half of its 18 triples and finished the game 49% overall from the floor.
 
Cincinnati (12-9) had a miserable time shooting the basketball and if not for free throws, today’s margin would have been much worse.
 
The Bearcats were 11-of-12 from the line, compared to just 17-of-54 from the floor. Most of the misses came from Day Day Thomas (10), Jizzle James (eight) and Simas Lukosius (six).
 
“I thought defensively, the guys came out with a good focus,” DeVries said. “We put a lot of stress on starting the game off better because we had dug ourselves such big holes that by the time we came out of it, it was too much.”
 
West Virginia’s biggest lead was 22 points with 7:47 left on Yesufu’s wing 3. 
 
Cincinnati switched to full-court pressure while West Virginia was content to run clock, resulting in the Bearcats scoring eight straight points before Toby Okani’s dunk ended the run.
 
A Yesufu runner, a Dillon Mitchell jumper and Rayvon Griffith’s 3 were the only baskets made by both teams during the game’s final 4:24.
 
The Mountaineers turned 14 Bearcat turnovers into 20 points and outscored them 30 to 22 in the paint.
 
Thomas was the only UC player to reach double figures with 10.
 
Cincinnati had four field goal droughts in the first half lasting nearly three minutes each, including the last 3:55 when all it could get were free throws from Lukosius and Josh Reed.
 
“Even when we made mistakes, I thought our connectivity of covering for one another was really good and that led to some opportunities for our offense to get going,” DeVries said.
 
The Mountaineers also did a good job of taking away UC’s lob game to 7-foot center Aziz Bandaogo, who finished with only one field goal in four attempts in 18 minutes of action.
 
“That’s a hard game plan to execute sometimes because you’ve got a guard coming down hill and they love to throw lobs. Obviously the bigs did a really good job of not giving that up, but then the guards of not getting (beaten) was the biggest key to it all,” DeVries explained. “They had to get back in front so our bigs did not have to stay quite as long (to help) and get put into indecision of do I help, or do I go back to the big?”
 
Amani Hansberry grabbed 11 rebounds for the Mountaineers while Mitchell finished with 10 boards for the Bearcats.
 
Several players from last year’s Cincinnati team that routed WVU 92-56 in the regular season finale were on the floor for this afternoon’s game as well.
 
West Virginia, now 14-7 overall, evens its conference record at 5-5, which puts it right in the middle of the Big 12 standings one game behind 6-4 BYU, Baylor and Kansas.
 
WVU remains on the road to play at TCU on Wednesday night. The Horned Frogs played Colorado today in Fort Worth.