MORGANTOWN — There were no brushes to be found in the Coliseum on Tuesday, no rollers or buckets, either.
Plenty of paint, though.
As in for a second straight Big 12 game, WVU had little chance of defending the paint, as Kansas State dominated around the rim for an 81-67 victory.
The Wildcats (12-3, 2-0 Big 12) scored 44 points around the rim.
That included going 16 of 21 on lay-up attempts and a perfect 6 of 6 on dunks.
“When the ball gets to the paint,” Kansas State head coach Jerome Tang began, “good things happen.”
No kidding.
And WVU (5-10, 0-2), which has begun Big 12 play with an 0-2 start for a second consecutive season, was again powerless to stop it.
“Honestly, it’s not that difficult of a task,” said WVU guard RaeQuan Battle, who scored 21 points in the loss, but 18 of those came in the first half. “It’s just kind of buying in as a team and executing what we practice every day.”
After giving up 48 points in the paint in Saturday’s loss against Houston, the Mountaineers spent the better part of its practice time coming up with a plan to defend the rim against the Wildcats.
“We were working on that for the past two days,” Battle said.
It was tough to tell, as Kansas State ran out to a 26-10 paint advantage in the first half.
Much of that came off taking advantage of WVU miscues and getting a fast break or by making the necessary passes inside once the Wildcats broke through WVU’s double-team attempts on the perimeter.
“Our rotations were a little off,” Battle said. “We tried to fix it in the second half, but they still exposed it.”
Kansas State shot 53.8% (28 of 52) from the floor, the highest a team has shot against the Mountaineers this season.
It was just one game removed from Houston shooting 53.1%, which was the previous high.
That damage was done near the rim, to the point where Tang actually got on one of his guards for taking a 3-pointer in the second half rather than looking to drive the ball.
“They’re going to force their will down low,” WVU head coach Josh Eilert said of the Wildcats, and the rest of the Big 12, for that matter.
WVU is without a true center. Akok Akok is playing out of position and he gave up 40 pounds against K-State big man Will McNair Jr., who finished with 12 points and nine rebounds.
The Mountaineers actually went with Pat Suemnick in the starting lineup. He has more strength than Akok, but at 6-foot-8, Suemnick is not exactly a textbook rim protector.
And so the challenge will continue for this WVU bunch in the days and weeks to come.
“I didn’t feel like they just pounded it down low on us,” Eilert said. “They took advantage of our ball-screen coverage more than we took advantage of their ball-screen coverage. Our rotations weren’t there with the way we were playing.
“We worked on it for two days in practice and thought it looked really good. I thought we could hang our hat on that.”
WVU took a 42-40 halftime lead into the locker room, but it was short-lived in the second half.
Battle was unstoppable in the first half, but his final three points of the game came in the first two minutes of the second half.
He was held scoreless from there and K-State continued to build a lead over the final 13 minutes.
Cam Carter led the way with 23 points and the Wildcats finished with four players in double figures.
WVU was held to just 39.2% (20 of 51) shooting, although it did add 19 points from the foul line.
Noah Farrakhan and Kerr Kriisa each added 11 points and Kobe Johnson came off the bench to add nine for the Mountaineers.
