MORGANTOWN — West Virginia held Texas Tech to just seven fourth-quarter points Wednesday night and the Mountaineers avoided an 0-3 start to Big 12 play with a 64-53 victory inside the Coliseum.
“We knew we couldn’t go 0-3 to start Big 12 play,” WVU point guard Madisen Smith said. “That wasn’t going to happen.”
It could have very easily happened, because this was an ugly performance by the Mountaineers (8-5, 1-2 Big 12). They turned the ball over 18 times, went scoreless for nearly the first five minutes of the third quarter and shot just 35.8% (19 of 53) from the floor.
“It wasn’t a pretty win,” WVU head coach Mike Carey said. “I’d much rather have an ugly win than a pretty loss, so we’ll take it and build on it.”
KK Deans led WVU with 15 points and five assists and Smith also added 15 for the Mountaineers, who hit the road to play at No. 13 Texas at 8 p.m. Saturday. The Longhorns lost at home to Texas Tech, 74-61, last week.
Texas lost to Kansas in overtime Wednesday and has lost two of its last three games.
“We knew we were turning the ball over too many times,” Smith said. “We knew we had to turn it around.”
WVU did that with its defense. Texas Tech (8-7, 1-3) was held to just 2 of 14 shooting in the fourth quarter and turned it over eight times, and what was a slim 46-45 lead heading into the final quarter quickly turned into WVU taking over the game.
“West Virginia is really physical and they definitely brought it in the fourth quarter,” Texas Tech head coach Krista Gerlich said. “It was difficult for us to get clean looks at the basket.
“You could see it was a lot more difficult to get from Point A to Point B.”
Freshman JJ Quinerly came off the bench to add 11 points for her season high with the Mountaineers, but it was Jayla Hemingway’s drive to the bucket that gave the Mountaineers the lead for good, 49-48, with 6:04 remaining. From there, WVU got the job done from the foul line. The Mountaineers scored their final 13 points from the line.
Both teams struggled early. The Mountaineers scored just nine points in the first quarter, but still led.
“Both teams couldn’t put it in the hole,” Carey said. “That’s the thing, if you’re not scoring, you can still play defense. You can’t let your offense effect your defense. We had some go in and out. We had missed lay-ups. We just couldn’t score, but we continued to play defense and that’s why we won the game.”
Vivian Gray led Texas Tech with 16 points and seven rebounds, but was just 7 of 21 from the floor.
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