Mountaineers Show They Can Win Ugly After Surviving 2nd Half Slog

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — In some ways, Friday night’s ugly second half showed just as much about the Mountaineers as Monday’s 21-0 start did.

Things aren’t always going to go the WVU’s way, every team faces adversity after all, and being able to survive that and win anyway is a critical skill for a group to have.

“Winning is hard, it’s something you never apologize for,” WVU coach Darian DeVries said after Friday’s 75-69 win over UMass. “I’m proud of this group. They’re going to learn to win together and they’re going to learn to lose together at some point too. That’s all part of the process.”

WVU Basketball Survives Flat 2nd Half to Pull Off Win Over UMass

West Virginia played great in the first half versus the Minutemen and carried a 17-point lead into halftime, 45-28. After the break, however, the Mountaineers shot just 6-24 from the floor and let the Minutemen crawl back into the game.

“You could feel it, and the crowd knew it too, a big lead slipped away,” DeVries said. “I thought our guys responded well down the stretch and were able to get us to a point where we were up double digits again…That’s not always easy to do when the momentum starts to shift to get it back and close off a game.”

UMass cut the lead to single digits several times in the second half, but WVU always responded with a bucket, a trip to the free throw line or a stop to hold onto the lead.

“Coach always talks about being resilient and being able to take a punch and fight back,” forward Amani Hansberry said. “Games aren’t always clean and aren’t always easy…it’s really just staying together as a team in those tough moments, that’s the most important part for us.”

Hansberry scored a career-high 16 points in the win with four offensive rebounds and six boards overall. His layup with two minutes left to play boosted WVU’s back up to nine points at a critical point of the game.

WVU’s offense struggled in the second half in part because UMass only turned the ball over three times. In the first half, WVU caused a dozen turnovers and turned them into 22 points. The Mountaineers scored no points off turnovers after halftime.

“Pace is great for us. It’s why we want to play that way and get into the open floor,” DeVries said. “You’re not going to be able to do that every night because the game’s going to get slow and they’re going to make it ugly at times.

“Finding a way to win ugly is a quality too,” DeVries continued. “It’s not going to be an 18-point lead every night and you sail off into the sunset. Some nights you’ve got to figure out a way, when it’s not going well and we’re not making shots, to still win that game.”

West Virginia has a week off before playing the Backyard Brawl at Pitt inside the Peterson Events Center next Friday, Nov. 15 at 8 p.m.

For a related story, WVU fans enjoyed the end result against UMass.