MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — For nearly 40 minutes, Deuce McBride and Rasir Bolton went back and forth like a ping-pong match.
McBride and No. 8 West Virginia came away with a hard-fought 70-65 victory against Bolton and Iowa State (1-4, 0-2 Big 12), on Friday at the WVU Coliseum.
It was Bolton who had the best individual night, finishing with 25 points, four rebounds and four assists.
“Rasir is a great player and obviously he did his thing tonight,” said McBride, who finished with 18 points and six rebounds. “It doesn’t have to come down to a one-on-one battle. It’s a team game and we have to guard him a little bit better as a team.”
Bolton’s pull-up jumper with 3:51 remaining gave the Cyclones a 63-60 lead, but it would be the final basket Iowa State scored the rest of the way.
“Those last three or four possessions, we switched every ball screen,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said. “He drove past us. He shot it over us. He made some hard shots.”
Deuce got the last laugh when he canned two free throws with 20.6 seconds remaining that gave WVU the lead for good, 66-65.
Iowa State called timeout after he made his first attempt.
“That didn’t really bother me at all,” he said. “I guess the tried to ice me.”
Not playing big
Outside of 7-foot freshman Xavier Foster, who played just five minutes off the bench for Iowa State, the Mountaineers had a huge size advantage inside.
WVU did hold a 16-4 advantage in second-chance points, but both teams scored 32 points in the paint and WVU only held a slight 38-32 rebounding advantage.
“This has been a habitual problem,” Huggins said of the points in the paint. “If you go back and look at points in the paint, it’s been a problem from South Dakota State on.”
WVU forwards Derek Culver and Oscar Tshiebwe combined for 30 points and 17 rebounds, but Iowa State’s defense on the perimeter kept WVU guards from getting the ball inside even more.
“I give Iowa State credit for putting an enormous amount of pressure on whoever was trying to throw the ball into the post,” WVU guard Taz Sherman said. “It was very difficult in that sense. I’m a 6-foot-4 guard and they would have a 6-5 wing on me and I tried to make a pass into the high post and ended up having one turnover in that area. It was difficult most of the times.”
News and notes
** West Virginia won its third consecutive game against the Cyclones, which have not won in Morgantown since Jan. 10, 2015.
** After going 7 of 15 from the foul line in the first half, the Mountaineers improved in the second half, going 18 of 22.
“Desperation. We had to make them,” Huggins said. “We had to make them to stay in the game. That is concentration. You stand up there when you know you have to make them.”
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