MORGANTOWN — Baylor got a free win Saturday, or rather a victory secured from the free-throw line.
In what may be the rarest of stat lines you’ll ever see in a basketball game, the Bears pulled out a 74-71 overtime victory over West Virginia inside the Foster Pavilion without making a single basket in the overtime period.
Instead, Baylor (16-9, 8-6 Big 12), who has now won seven consecutive times against the Mountaineers, went 9 of 12 from the foul line.
Those nine points were enough to hold off the Mountaineers (15-10, 6-8), who have dropped six of their last eight games since knocking off then-No. 2 Iowa State back on Jan. 18.
“Our guys really competed and played their tails off,” WVU head coach Darian DeVries said on his radio postgame show. “Unfortunately for us, we’ve got to figure out how to do a better job of keeping people off the free-throw line.”
There were a number of runs by both teams and key stats were piled up throughout, but the most glaring of all was Baylor finishing 27 of 32 from the foul line.
That’s the most free-throw attempts against WVU in Big 12 play this season.
“When you give a team 27 points and they shoot 32 free throws, it’s hard to win,” DeVries said.
Neither team scored in overtime until Langston Love nailed two free throws for a 67-65 lead with 3:01 remaining.
Baylor followed that up 85 seconds later with two more from Robert Wright III, and now it became a game of chase for the Mountaineers over the final 1:38.
WVU went scoreless in overtime until Amani Hansberry hit a lay-up in the post at the 1:17 mark and Javon Small scored on a drive that cut Baylor’s lead to 71-69 with 43 seconds left.
WVU then fouled Norchad Omier, who made one of two at the line for a 72-69 lead, which set up WVU’s best shot at getting back into the game.
Small, who finished with 22 points and six assists, drew Baylor’s defensive attention and passed the ball to the corner to a wide open Jonathan Powell, but the freshman’s 3-point attempt was too strong and Baylor held on by going 2 for 4 at the line to finish it up.
Just to get it to overtime, WVU overcame a six-point deficit with 8:25 remaining in the second half, survived foul trouble from both Hansberry and Eduardo Andre — the team’s tallest players — and it’s defense held one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the Big 12 to just 5 of 22 (22.7%) from behind the arc.
“I told the team that sometimes there are games where you don’t play as hard as you’d like and you end up losing,” DeVries said. “This wasn’t one of those by any means.”
WVU shot 56% in the second half, as both Small and Toby Okani provided a one-two punch that kept the Mountaineers in position for an upset.
Okani finished with 19 points and seven rebounds, but ran up against an unfortunate moment in the final moments of the second half.
With the game tied at 61, Small drove into the middle of the paint and hit Okani with a feed along the baseline.
Okani would have had an easy dunk, at least a lay-up, but his left foot slipped on a wet spot on the floor and his awkward attempt rolled off the front of the rim.
“It was a really tough play, because we were going to go up two with about two and a half minutes left,” DeVries said. “Someone had fallen on the possession before. Toby was going to go up for a dunk. It’s not Toby’s fault at all. It’s just extremely bad luck.”
In the final minute of regulation, WVU thwarted off a drive to the rim from Baylor’s V.J. Edgecombe, and then Hansberry tied the game at 65 with two free throws with 33.2 seconds left.
Baylor’s final shot in regulation came from Wright, whose drive down the right side fell off the rim. The rebound was knocked around and ended up in Powell’s hands. His half-court heave nearly banked in, but came off too hard, sending the game into overtime.
“What I loved is that they didn’t give into it at all,” DeVries said. “They didn’t give into they were shooting all these free throws and we’re not. They kept fighting and kept persevering. We had a chance to win the game. There were opportunities there and we came up a little bit short.”
