.Huggins earned his 876th win to tie Adolph Rupp for seventh place on the NCAA Division I coaching list.''My dad is one of the winningest coaches in the history of Ohio high school and they used to say, 'That was win number whatever', and his response always was `That just means I'm old,''' Huggins said. ''I have never been caught up in that. I'm more caught up in we're 16-3 and we need to be about 29-3.'' With Missouri's Jeremiah Tillman missing his sixth straight game because of a stress fracture in his left foot, the Tigers had no answer for the Mountaineers' inside game and were outrebounded 50-30.Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin came away impressed with West Virginia's tandem of Tshiebwe and Culver.''I'm not sure if there is another team, thinking off the top of my head, that functions like that in the country,'' Martin said. ''In the second half they turned the heat up. Whether their bigs were scoring the ball or not, they had a presence.'' Huggins said he didn't believe Tshiebwe and Culver had their best games. Culver was just 2 of 10 from the floor.''We have missed more one-footers today than we have for a long time,'' Huggins said. ''They were average at best, I thought, for them. And you know, we set their standards a little higher.'' West Virginia used its rebounding and several Missouri turnovers to pull away.Haley scored six points during a 20-0 run that started just after halftime. McBride's 3-pointer capped the big rally for a 47-25 lead with 12:28 remaining.''I think we did a great job executing on defense, more so in the second half than the first,'' Haley said.Torrence Watson scored 19 points to lead Missouri (9-10).Missouri missed 18 of its first 20 shots of the game to fall behind 20-6, but the Tigers' speed started causing problems for the bigger Mountaineers. Missouri got numerous baskets in its transition offense to close the half on a 17-4 run and trailed 24-23 at halftime.''We stopped playing,'' Huggins said. ''We were just standing around for a little while, then we woke up at halftime.'' BIG PICTUREMissouri: Leading scorer Dru Smith had five turnovers and was held to two points, 10 under his scoring average. He missed both of his field-goal attempts.West Virginia: The Mountaineers entered the game third in the nation in field-goal defense at 36.2% and held Missouri to 28% (15 of 53) shooting.FREE THROW CLANKSWest Virginia shot 57% (16-28) from the free-throw line, and that could make the difference between a quick exit and a deep run in postseason play. Culver was 0-6. The Mountaineers are second-worst in the Big 12 for the season, making 64% of their free throws.POLL IMPLICATIONSThe Mountaineers should move up in the Top 25 poll after two convincing wins, including a 97-59 victory over Texas on Monday.UP NEXTMissouri: Hosts Georgia on Tuesday.West Virginia: Plays at No. 18 Texas Tech on Wednesday.---More college basketball: http://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and http://www.twitter.com/-Top25)
Jan 24, 2020Even in the biggest or best wins, coaches usually have a "but" line. As in, "We were outstanding, but there were two or three possessions where we failed to close out on shooters." West Virginia coach Bob Huggins didn't even try to use that line after Monday night's 97-59 Big 12 Conference rout of Texas."It's hard to find somebody who didn't play well and we played everybody," he told reporters.Huggins hopes to recycle that quote Saturday when the No. 14 Mountaineers step out of the conference for the yearly SEC/Big 12 Challenge as Missouri visits WVU Coliseum in Morgantown.Coming off a stunning 84-68 loss on Jan. 18 at Kansas State, the Mountaineers (15-3) took out 40 minutes' worth of frustration on Texas. They canned 51.4 percent of their field-goal tries, outrebounded the Longhorns 53-25 and forced 18 turnovers while committing just eight."We were into it," Huggins said. "We were denying the ball where they wanted to get the ball to, we did a much better job of containing dribble penetration and we pretty much limited them to one shot. We did everything that we didn't do the other day." West Virginia earned sizable advantages of 27-4 in second-chance points and 24-1 in points off turnovers. It scored from every spot on the floor, with nine players chipping in between seven and 13 points. Freshman forward Oscar Tshiebwe scored 13 and grabbed 11 rebounds, saving his biggest highlight for a tomahawk dunk after running the length of the floor to chase down a loose ball in the second half.While the Mountaineers named the score on Texas, Missouri (9-9) was setting an NCAA record and losing another game. Despite breaking the mark for consecutive made free throws, the Tigers fell 66-64 Tuesday night at home to Texas A&M.Missouri made all 31 foul shots in a Jan. 18 loss to Alabama, then surpassed Chris Paul's 2004-05 Wake Forest team's old mark of 50 straight makes at the line by converting its first 23 against the Aggies. But it couldn't come close to equaling that kind of efficiency at the 3-point line, hitting only 9 of 35.Tigers coach Cuonzo Martin told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he felt most of the missed 3-balls were good looks."The 3-point shot looked wide open, so you've got to take that," he said. "But I thought we did a better job late in the game attacking the rim because that was there. You have straight-line drives and opportunities at the rim." Dru Smith leads Missouri with 12.1 points per game, and is coming off an 18-point, eight-assist outing in the loss to Texas A&M. This will be the Tigers' first game in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge since 2014-15.--Field Level Media
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