West Virginia’s Second Half Rally Falls Short in Loss to No. 6 Houston – West Virginia University Athletics

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia’s second half rally came up short in tonight’s 63-49 loss to sixth-ranked Houston at the WVU Coliseum.
 
The Cougars, winners of 13 straight games, had a comfortable 39-19 halftime lead, but West Virginia scored the first 11 points of the second half and was trailing 49-44 with 6:59 remaining and Jonathan Powell at the free throw line to shoot a one-and-one. 
 
The freshman missed, unfortunately, and at the other end of the floor LJ Cryer was fouled by Joseph Yesufu on his shot attempt that Toby Okani was called for goal tending. Cryer made the free throw, pushing the lead back to eight, and then it quickly grew back to 11 on Milos Uzan’s second-chance 3 after J’Wan Roberts grabbed one of his four offensive rebounds.
 
Subsequent missed free throws by Amani Hansberry and Sencire Harris enabled Houston to get its lead back to 15.
 
“When you are down 20 to a team like Houston, that’s incredibly difficult to come back from,” West Virginia coach Darian DeVries said afterward.
 
WVU ended up outscoring Houston 30-24 in the second half after the Cougars had built up their big first-half advantage.
 
“That second half was us,” DeVries said. “It’s the same guys. Nobody has left the team, or we’ve added a new guy, but when we’ve won the games, we’ve won because they played at that level. It’s getting after it and playing as hard as you can and disrupting on defense.
 
“As a coach, you hope we’ve got that back in the second half, but these last few first halves, we have come out not playing that way,” DeVries added.
 
As it has done in its prior two losses to Arizona State and Kansas State, the Mountaineers dug themselves a 13-3 hole to begin the game. WVU spotted Arizona State an early 10-2 lead and came out of the gate trailing 19-2 in last Saturday’s loss at Kansas State.
 
Houston (17-3, 9-0) got 17 points from West Virginia slayer Cryer, who is now 6-0 against the Mountaineers with 122 points going back to his Baylor days. The senior guard made half of his 12 field goal attempts and was three-for-three from the free throw line tonight.
 
Joseph Tugler contributed 12 points and seven rebounds while Uzan finished with 10.
 
J’Wan Roberts, who scored a game-high 22 points the first time these two teams met in Houston earlier this month, was held to just five.
 
Yesufu was West Virginia’s leading scorer with nine points.
 
Javon Small, the Big 12’s leading scorer coming into tonight’s game averaging 19.6 points per contest, was held to eight. He wasn’t able to get off his first shot attempt until 11:07 remaining in the first half.
 
Okani and Hansberry also tallied eight for the Mountaineers, who drop to 13-7 overall and 4-5 in Big 12 play.
 
West Virginia’s struggles from 3-point distance continued tonight. WVU finished the game making just four-of-18 and has now missed 55 of its last 67 from behind the arc.
 
The Mountaineers also failed to cash in from the free throw line by misfiring on six of their 11 attempts, three of those coming on front ends of one-and-ones in the second half when they were making their comeback.
 
“We have to hang our hat on the defensive end,” DeVries said. “That’s the way we can score and that’s the way we can get out in transition. I’m certainly proud of our guys’ fight in the second half. We had some opportunities to crawl back in the game and could have had it down to one possession with a couple of free throws, but we at least gave ourselves a chance to bring it down to the wire.”
 
As it did the first time these two teams played, Houston controlled the glass by out-rebounding West Virginia 34 to 19 – 13 of those on the offensive end which led to a 16-to-three advantage in second-chance points.
 
The Mountaineers return to the road to play at Cincinnati on Sunday afternoon. The Bearcats lost 69-66 at Utah on Tuesday night.