West Virginia Rallies to Down Georgetown in Big 12-Big East Battle – West Virginia University Athletics

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia rallied from a five-point second half deficit to down Georgetown 73-60 in a Big 12-Big East Battle game at the WVU Coliseum Friday night.
 
The Hoyas, leading 30-28 at halftime and 41-36 on Malik Mack’s 3-pointer with 14:46 left, got just a Drew Fielder layup over the next six minutes as the Mountaineers went on a 17-2 run to take control of the game.
 
Javon Small, who scored a game-high 26, began the run with a three-point play, followed by an Eduardo Andre dunk and then two K.J. Tenner free throws tie the game 43.
 
Consecutive Toby Okani baskets and then 3s from Small and Tucker DeVries built the Mountaineer lead to 10, 53-43, with 9:28 left. Another DeVries basket pushed the lead to 12 before the Hoyas rallied with seven straight.
 
Small again stopped the run with a jumper, and his biggest shot of the game, a bank-shot 3 with the shot clock winding down, pushed the margin back to 11 with 1:20 to go. Okani put the punctuation mark on tonight’s win with a breakaway dunk with a minute remaining.
 
Georgetown, playing its first road game of the season and just its second against a power conference opponent, used changing defenses in the first half to hang around.
 
The Hoyas (7-2) took the lead six minutes into the contest and led for 20:11 of the game.
 
“In the first half we were just stuck in the mud a little bit and couldn’t get much going, but thankfully defensively we were able to keep it fairly tight going into the half,” West Virginia coach Darian DeVries said. 
 
“We just weren’t getting a lot of movement, and I thought Georgetown did a nice job keeping us off-balance a little bit by switching defenses, and that’s one of the things we haven’t seen a lot of yet,” DeVries added. “We’ve got to better in that area of flowing a little bit better, but in the second half our movement was a lot better, and we were able to get into transition which also helped.”
 
DeVries contributed 15 points on 5 of 10 shooting, including 13 in the second half. Okani chipped in with 11.
 
Andre gave West Virginia a big lift coming off the bench in the second half and finished the game with four points, four blocks and three defensive rebounds.
 
“I thought he changed the game with some really big rim-protection plays that would have been layups that he came out and got and then got us into transition,” DeVries said. “I love the energy he came in and gave us a big spark that led to that big run in the second half.”
 
West Virginia (6-2) held its own on the glass against the much bigger Hoyas and actually outboarded them 34 to 33.
 
Guards Sencire Harris (nine) and DeVries (seven) led the Mountaineers in rebounding.
 
“The second half I thought we found our energy and a big part of that was the tremendous crowd,” DeVries said. “They really rallied behind us and gave us a huge boost and we were able to find some of that energy and enthusiasm. The crowd was a big difference in the game and I’m thankful for everyone who showed up.”
 
WVU outscored Georgetown 28 to 22 in the paint and had a 19 to 12 edge on points off turnovers. Other specialty stats in West Virginia’s favor were fastbreak points, 14 to 4, and bench points, 9 to 8.
 
Georgetown got 17 from Jayden Epps and 13 from leading scorer Thomas Sorber, who played a good portion of the second half with four fouls.
 
West Virginia finished the game out-shooting Georgetown 45.6% to 37.9%, and also had a 12 to 7 advantage in free throws.
 
WVU’s win tonight evens the long-standing series at 27 games each, and levels the Big 12’s record in its challenge with the Big East 4-4.
 
A crowd of 11,522 watched tonight’s contest.
 
This was the first of a 16-day, four-game homestand that includes games coming up on Tuesday, Dec. 10 against North Carolina Central, on Saturday, Dec. 14 against Bethune-Cookman and on Sunday, Dec. 22 against Mercyhurst.
 
Tickets for those games are on sale through the Mountaineer Ticket Office and can be purchased by logging on to WVUGAME.com.