After an upsetting loss at the hands of Kent State, the West Virginia Mountaineers rebounded in a big way – both figuratively and literally – in the win against Alcorn State University Braves, 97-62. Senior Kevin Jones led the Mountaineers with a career-high 29 points and 13 rebounds, including 10 on the offensive side. The 10 offensive boards broke the 20-year-old record of 320 formerly held by Chris Brooks. The double-double is also his 14th of his career. The Mountaineers outrebounded the Braves 57-35, led by Jones’ 13 and freshman Gary Browne’s 12.
The Mountaineers started off slow with a 10-10 tie. After that however, they went on a 19-4 run to help guide them to a 44-28 halftime lead. Jones led all scorers with 29 points. Darryl “Truck” Bryant scored 18 points by going 5 for 10 from the field and Kevin Noreen played only 11 minutes, but added a career-high 12 points of his own. Also scoring in double figures for the Mountaineers were Jabarie Hinds and Deniz Kilicli.
“You can always get something out of this and I thought we played hard tonight,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “We didn’t run offense in the first half; I think five of our first seven shots were 3s and we don’t need that.
“I think we’ve got to shoot 3s but we don’t have to shoot five of our first seven from 3, particularly when you’ve got an opponent who is out-manned inside with Deniz and KJ’s ability to score the ball in close.”
The Mountaineers shot 7-20 from the arc and 48.6 percent overall. One thing that the young Mountaineer squad needs to work on is their knack for committing turnovers. They team turned the ball over 16 times in the contest, which is lower than their season average of 19 per game.
“You can’t continue to go down the path we were going down – you can continue to throw the ball around the way we are throwing the ball around,” said Huggins. “I think this is the first time this year we had more assists than we did turnovers.”
West Virginia (2-1) will get set to take on Morehead State in Charleston South Carolina next Tuesday night. As Pitt fans saw with Long Beach State, no team can overlook their competition.
“They’re going to press us the whole game and they’re going to play the 1-1-3, the old amoeba that Pitt used to play back in the day,” said Huggins. “That will be good for us – it’s good for a young basketball team to be able to see a lot of different things.”
The game is scheduled for a 7 p.m. tipoff time and can be seen on the Big East Network.
Photo Credits: All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks Photo
Discussion about this post