In what was arguably their worst performance of the season, the West Virginia Mountaineers (15-6, 5-3) lost to the St. John’s Red Storm 9-11, 3-6) 78-62. The victory snapped a four-game losing streak for St. John’s. Moe Harkless led St. John’s with 23 points on 11-of-20 shooting, three blocks and 13 rebounds on their way to victory.
Leading all scorers was Kevin Jones who posted his 14th double-double of the season with 26 points and 14 rebounds. This also marks the 13th 20-point performance of the season for Jones. Truck Bryan added 16 points, but made just four shots from the floor. Bryant’s cold shooting ways continue as in the past two games, Bryant is just six of 29 from the field.
As a whole, the Mountaineers shot just 35.4 percent from the field on 23-of-65 shooting. The Mountaineers also finished the game with 14 turnovers, but outrebounded the Red Storm 44-40.
The Mountaineers started off slowly with only six points when at the under eight minute media timeout came around in the first half. They went into halftime trailing 36-20.
“We were not ready to play,” said Mountaineer Coach Bob Huggins. “We did not have two very good days of practice. Sometimes success is harder to handle than failure and you’re really not much of a guy if you get knocked down and you don’t get back up.”
Jones had a chance to shift the momentum in the second half after the Red Storm bench was called for a technical, but Jones ended up missing both shots, which would close the lead to 10 points.
“I put KJ to the line and he misses two so potentially we go to (10) have it out of bounds, score, get it to (eight) and then we can have a chance,” said Huggins. “I thought that was a big turning point.”
With the loss, their third in league play, the Mountaineers find themselves in the middle of the pack in the Big East and are in the middle of a tough stretch of games. The Mountaineers will travel to Syracuse to battle the Orange on Saturday and then go back to Morgantown to face the Pitt Panthers on Big Monday.
“The reality is we are going to go play Syracuse and if Fab Melo is back they’re the best team in the country,” said Huggins.
Photo Credits: All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks Photo
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