MORGANTOWN — At best, the passes thrown by WVU players Saturday ended up in the first row of the Moody Center.
At worst, they ended up in the hands of Texas players, which got the Longhorns off and running.
And, boy, did Texas ever run the Mountaineers right out of the gym to the tune of a 94-60 victory to remain at the top of the Big 12 standings.
The 34-point margin of victory was the biggest ever against the Mountaineers (15-10, 4-8 Big 12) in Big 12 play, and maybe the most embarrassing, too.
Most of that came in the form of the 20 turnovers committed by WVU, which led to 32 points for the Longhorns.
“We went back to turning the ball over, which I thought we kind of had fixed,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said in his radio postgame show. “How many times did we throw it out of bounds and there was no one there to catch it? One lady got hit right in the face with one. She didn’t see it coming.”
The Mountaineers probably didn’t see this bad loss coming, either.
Not after entering the game having won five of its last seven, which included victories over three AP Top 25 teams.
But, after WVU took a slim 12-8 lead over the first five minutes of the game, it was all Texas (20-5, 9-3) after that.
It was the Longhorns’ fourth win a row against WVU with those victories coming by an average of 14.5 points per game.
“We didn’t make shots. They made shots,” Huggins said. “They’re good. They’re very talented, but we obviously shouldn’t lose like that.”
WVU turned the ball over 13 times in the first half, some of them were as bad as they’ve been all season.
Tre Mitchell stood at the top of the key and tried to throw a pass to Kedrian Johnson, but the pass sailed wide and landed out of bounds.
On another, Mitchell flipped the ball to Johnson after grabbing a rebound, but Johnson never got a handle on it and lost the ball out of bounds.
Mitchell, in his return to Texas after playing for the Longhorns last season, finished with five turnovers and just four points.
“I didn’t know what to do with Tre,” Huggins said. “Tre just wasn’t Tre. He wasn’t as confident, focused maybe.”
Johnson, a Dallas native, added four turnovers and was held to just five points on 1 for 7 shooting.
That all led to the Longhorns dominating the later stages of the first half, taking a 51-30 halftime lead.
“The game started out very physical,” Huggins said. “Everybody keeps talking abut we’re physical, but we’re not like that. They were physical early and we didn’t respond to it very well.”
It got worse in the second half, as WVU didn’t surpass Texas’ first-half scoring until there was 2:56 remaining in the game.
By that time, Huggins had already pulled all of his starters and let his backups finish the game.
Sir’Jabari Rice came off the bench to lead Texas with 24 points. He was 5 of 6 shooting, connected on four 3-pointers and was a perfect 10 of 10 from the line.
To that stat, the Longhorns, too, were nearly perfect, going a perfect 24 of 24 from the foul line, before missing their final attempt of the game.
Texas also shot 47% (30 of 64) from the floor and was 10 of 17 from behind the arc.
WVU had no answers for that. Emmitt Matthews Jr. came out hot with nine of WVU’s first 12 points, but he only scored four more over the final 34 minutes of the game.
Erik Stevenson nailed a 3-pointer with 16:56 left in the first half, but that was the only shot he made the entire game.
“We didn’t play well,” Huggins said. “We threw the ball all over the place.”
Marcus Carr, after scoring 23 points against WVU in Morgantown earlier this season, finished with 16 and Timmy Allen added 14 points and nine rebounds for the Longhorns.
WVU, which travels to No. 14 Baylor on Monday, fell to 3-8 all-time playing at Texas.
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