by John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia and UCF came into tonight’s game on losing streaks. West Virginia’s losing streak ends and UCF’s continues following tonight’s 77-67 Mountaineer victory at the WVU Coliseum.
The Knights have now dropped four straight and have won just once in their last seven games since defeating the Mountaineers 72-59 in Orlando back on Jan. 23.
WVU got 24 points from RaeQuan Battle and 15 points and 10 rebounds from Jesse Edwards to snap its four-game conference losing streak and improve to 9-7 in games played in Morgantown. West Virginia is now 9-17 overall and 4-9 in Big 12 play and moves out of the cellar in the league standings, ½ game ahead of 3-9 Oklahoma State.
Tonight, the Mountaineers opted to use a lot of zone defense and let the Knights bomb away from the 3-point line. UCF complied by taking more than half of its 70 shot attempts from behind the arc (38), converting just eight for 23.7%.
“I just wanted to try and throw them off and give them a different look than what they saw in Orlando,” West Virginia coach Josh Eilert said afterward.
West Virginia, meanwhile, shot 7-of-14 from behind the arc and got 26 points in the paint, mostly from Edwards who did not play in Orlando when UCF defeated West Virginia by 13 points. Ibrahima Diallo, who scored 14 points and grabbed 12 rebounds in the first meeting, was a non-factor tonight with Edwards back on the floor. Diallo scored just 3 points on 1-of-2 shooting with four rebounds in 16 minutes of action.
“That’s the difference maker having a true five in the game and in Orlando we didn’t have that,” Eilert said. “Going up against a guy like Diallo down low, that can make it really difficult.”
UCF’s leading scorer, Jaylin Sellers, who had a game-high 18 points in Orlando, was held to just 6 on 1-of-11 shooting. That’s 11 points below his season average.
WVU, meanwhile, got 14 points from forward Quinn Slazinski, who did a nice job handling the basketball late in the game when UCF used pressure to try and speed things up to get back in it.
West Virginia began by scoring nine of the game’s first 11 points and built its first double-digit lead since the Texas game more than a month ago back on Jan. 13. The Mountaineers’ biggest lead of the first half was 13 with 4:21 remaining.
The Knights (13-12, 4-9) managed to avoid a shot-clock violation when Darius Johnson was credited with a bank-shot 3 ahead of the buzzer, and two West Virginia points were taken off the scoreboard after a replay review wiped off Noah Farrakhan’s layup and Sellers was credited with a block.
Later, Johnson’s goal-tend basket was also taken away by replay review and Akok Akok was awarded a block at the conclusion of the first half, giving the Mountaineers a 37-30 halftime lead.
After Shermarri Allen’s layup to begin the second half, West Virginia got five quick points from Battle and Slazinski to get its lead back to 10. The margin remained between 8-to-10 points until the nine-minute mark when Josiah Harris ‘corner 3 and Kobe Johnson’s driving layup gave WVU a 58-45 advantage with 8:55 left.
WVU’s biggest lead was 15 with 1:38 and 1:08 remaining.
“It was critically important how we came out in the second half,” Eilert said. “I really challenged them. If you look back out our three conference wins, we really won or tied those first four minutes (of the second half).”
West Virginia outrebounded UCF 42 to 36 and never trailed.
