No. 14 West Virginia gets top effort from starters to roll past Texas

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — It was a 3-pointer taken basically off of one leg while fading away, generally the kind of shot that would have Jordan McCabe taking a seat on West Virginia’s bench seconds later.

This time, though, it went in and McCabe quickly looked over to teammate Jermaine Haley and yelled, “I’m back, baby.”

So, too, are the 14th-ranked Mountaineers, who destroyed Texas, 97-59, on Monday, in front of 12,592 fans inside the WVU Coliseum.

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The 38-point margin of victory tied for the biggest WVU has ever had in a Big 12 game and was also the worst defeat of Texas coach Shaka Smart’s career.

All of that is newsworthy in itself, but even more so in that the Mountaineers (15-3, 4-2 Big 12) were just 48 hours removed from their most crushing defeat at the hands of Kansas State on Saturday.

“I knew we were going to play,” said WVU head coach Bob Huggins, who recorded his 875th career win, which is one short of Kentucky legend Adolph Rupp for seventh place on the all-time Division I wins list. “I knew we weren’t going to go through the motions like we did out there.”

McCabe’s three gave WVU a 32-15 lead and was part of a 28-2 run that essentially put the nail in the Longhorns’ coffin.

Texas (12-6, 2-4) saw its three-game winning streak against WVU come to a screeching halt, as the Longhorns became a mere innocent bystander to a resurgence from the Mountaineers’ starting five.

That included McCabe, who scored a season-high 10 points, as well as Haley and Emmitt Matthews Jr., who combined for 20 more in an overall effort from that trio that hasn’t been seen in weeks.

“We heard a lot of stuff about being fake starters and things like that,” McCabe said. “Shots fell tonight and confidence is going to continue to rise all the way down the roster.”

Fake starters or not, that trio went for 30 points and 15 rebounds and had Texas scrambling for answers.

The “other” two starters, Derek Culver and Oscar Tshiebwe, added 26 points and 19 rebounds.

“I thought they spread the wealth pretty well,” Smart said. “It wasn’t that guys did a lot of things that were surprising. Tshiebwe did what he does. Culver did what he does.

“I thought Haley was really effective for them with the way he rebounded and came off screens. McCabe played well. He hadn’t been playing as much, but we knew he was capable, based off what he did in the second half of last season.”

That is the McCabe the Mountaineers have waited for most of this season, the one who ended his freshman campaign averaging 13.5 points over the final 10 games of the 2018-19 season.

For that matter, McCabe, too, has been waiting for those shots to fall and has been working to get back into the groove he was in last season.

“I’ve stopped looking over my shoulder and just started to play,” he said. “The biggest thing for me with how I was playing, to a fan in the stands, they could go, “Where happened to McCabe with the finish he had last year to what he’s doing now?’ Production numbers fluctuate with your roster and our roster changed a lot. I had to realize what I had around me and use it to the best of my ability.”

McCabe did it in front of a star-studded crowd, including state Sen. Joe Manchin, WVU head football coach Neal Brown and former standout quarterback Jeff Hostetler, as well as state native Ted Valentine, who doubles as a Division I men’s basketball referee.

What they saw was West Virginia making a statement that they aren’t out of this Big 12 race just yet.

“We got embarrassed against Kansas State,” said Culver, who helped WVU hold a commanding 27-4 edge in second-chance points and a 52-18 edge in points in the paint. “We didn’t want to let another team to dictate what they were going to do to us. We wanted to take care of our own business.”

West Virginia Mountaineers students and mascot sing after defeating Texas Longhorns on Monday.

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No. 14 West Virginia gets top effort from starters to roll past Texas

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