MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — It begins in the backyard, at least that’s where West Virginia freshman guard Miles McBride begins his story.
The clock is counting down and McBride has the ball in his hands. It’s Game 7 of the NBA Finals and McBride can beat the Los Angeles Lakers with his last-second shot. The shot is in the air and it is ….
Sometimes that shot went in for McBride, sometimes it did not.
But always, the ball was in his hands for the biggest of moments.
“I always want the ball in my hands at the end of the game,” McBride said after leading the Mountaineers to a 77-71 road victory against Iowa State on Tuesday. “That’s how I’ve always been. In the backyard, you always want to be in those situations. I just want the ball down the stretch.”
The freshman finished with 17 points, but it was his four free throws over the final 17 seconds that iced the game.
“Like most freshmen, he’s been up and down,” West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins said of McBride.
That included Tuesday’s game, which was not all filled with backyard memories.
“I made some bad decisions down the stretch,” McBride said.
In the span of just 37 seconds in the second half, McBride went through a series of plays that had him all over the you-have-to-remember-he’s-a-freshman scale.
It was his 3-pointer with 8:23 remaining that gave WVU a 57-56 lead after the Mountaineers (20-10, 8-9 Big 12) watched the Cyclones erase a 13-point halftime deficit to take a 56-52 lead moments earlier.
“We got complacent when we had our lead,” WVU forward Derek Culver said. “We got real lackadaisical when it came to executing our plays. We just didn’t come out with that same hunger that we did in the first half.”
Following McBride’s three, he lost track of the clock on WVU’s next possession and was whistled for a 10-second violation.
WVU made up for the mistake by forcing a five-second inbounds violation on the Cyclones’ next possession.
“We’re really young and we haven’t been in a lot of situations like that like veteran teams have,” Huggins said. “We’ve done some really dumb things at times. We’ve had games where we turned it over repeatedly and got ourselves in holes we couldn’t get back out of.”
As for the Mountaineers’ previous road trips, this one was different, because they did not get in over their heads.
Iowa State began the second half on an 11-0 run, but it did take nearly six minutes to score those 11 points.
“We were able to get some stops and get some rebounds,” McBride said. “That makes a big difference.”
And if Huggins is forced to take the good with the bad when it comes to McBride, the WVU coach certainly saw plenty of good in the final moments.
“It’s always good to get a win when you’ve been struggling a little bit,” McBride said. “A lot of guys stepped up tonight and played really well and we needed them to play really well. If we can start guarding better down the stretch, I think we’ll be hard to mess with.”
WVU’s victory gave it a 4-8 mark in true road games this season after finishing 0-10 in 2018-19.
It also kept the Mountaineers alive for a first-round bye in next week’s Big 12 tournament after finishing in last place last season.
“We’re not necessarily there, yet, but we’re taking the proper steps to getting back to the West Virginia basketball people are accustomed to seeing,” Culver said.
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