by John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Six different Baylor players reached double figures to defeat West Virginia 94-81 here Saturday night at the WVU Coliseum.
The 12th-ranked Bears shot 54% from the floor and took advantage of a Mountaineer defense that has given up 86, 94 and 81 in their last three losses to BYU, Texas and TCU.
Tonight, Baylor scored on 63.1% of its 65 offensive possessions, turned 14 Mountaineer turnovers into 20 points and made 12 from behind the 3-point arc.
The Bears’ largest lead was 22, 71-49, with 10:51 left in the game.
“The easiest shot in basketball is a step-in shot and when they are getting them in second-chance opportunities, or just kicking it out, every coach knows those are the shots that you work on while growing up are those step-in shots coming right back at you,” West Virginia coach Josh Eilert said. “We’ve got to clean up our defensive rebounding and limit them to one shot.”
West Virginia (8-17, 3-9) rallied late to cut Baylor’s lead to nine, 89-80, on RaeQuan Battle’s 3, but the Bears took care of things at the free throw line. Baylor’s final 15 points of the game came at the line; the last field goal was Ja’Kobe Walter’s 3 with 6:21 to go.
Walter led the Bears with 23 points, although he missed 11 of his 17 field goal tries. Jayden Nunn made 7 of 11 and finished with 20, RayJ Dennis added 18 on 4-of-8 shooting and 7-foot center Yves Missi made all five of his field goal attempts and ended with 13.
Jaylen Bridges and Josh Ojianwuna scored 10 each.
West Virginia got a game-high 25 points from Battle before he fouled out with 25 seconds to go. Battle was 8 of 16 from the floor and hit 4 of 8 from behind the 3-point arc. Jesse Edwards contributed 21 points on 8 of 10 shooting and nearly missed a double-double with nine rebounds. However, he only played 24 minutes tonight because of early foul trouble.
“We need him on the floor,” Eilert said. “He only played 24 minutes and if it’s 35, it might be a different story.”
Overall, the Mountaineers shot 53.6%, making 30 of their 56 field goal attempts.
Baylor was 22 of 30 from the free throw line to West Virginia’s 19 of 27.
Baylor led 42-34 at halftime.
“They had an eight-point scoring run early in the second half and we’ve got to play with more of a sense of urgency, especially coming out of the break,” Eilert said. “The sense of urgency can’t turn up when you get down double digits and then that gets extended. We’re just not good enough to play the catch-up game.”
