WVU Basketball Couldn’t Handle BYU Attack, Tried to Pick Poison

WVU basketball tried to pick its poison against BYU Saturday night, ultimately falling to the Cougars after a disastrous second half.

When game-planning for the Cougars, WVU coach Darian DeVries knew his Mountaineers wouldn’t be able to completely shut down the second-highest scoring offense in the Big 12. 

“You have to pick something when you have a team that’s averaging 90 points the last few games,” DeVries said. “I thought the first half until the last two minutes, we had it right where we wanted it. We controlled the tempo and kept the crowd out of it.”

DeVries had to pick something to focus on, so he chose BYU’s three-point shooting. BYU is first in the Big 12, making 10.7 three-pointers per game and second shooting 37.4% from beyond the arc. 

The Mountaineers did successfully defend the perimeter as the Cougars only shot 5-15 from range in the game. Overall, WVU’s plan worked for most of the first half as BYU started 5-18 from the floor, and the Mountaineers led 19-15 with four minutes left in the first half.

That’s when BYU coach Kevin Young made the adjustment to focus on attacking the rim, and WVU’s perimeter-focused defense fell apart.

“My staff pointed out how much they were guarding the three-point line and so in those last five minutes we really just tried to highlight the rim,” Young said. “It felt like we were scoring at will.”

BYU closed the first half on a 10-0 run and completely controlled the game from that point forward. The Cougars outscored the Mountaineers 52-37 in the second half and it was even worse than that as 13 of WVU’s points came in the last three minutes after BYU had built a 30-point lead.

“In the first half, we did a really good job of controlling the tempo and were able to get some long possessions and didn’t give up much in transition or a lot of threes,” DeVries said. “In the second half, the way we were trying to defend the three-point line exposed us to some interior post touches and we weren’t able to handle that one-on-one.”

WVU’s gameplan allowed for one-on-one opportunities in the post, which BYU was happy to exploit. West Virginia center Eduardo Andre is a good defender and capable shot-blocker, but he was almost helpless trying to defend the stronger Fousseyni Traore in the post. 

Traore, who finished with a game-high 20 points, not only backed Andre down repeatedly, he also got both Andre and Amani Hansberry into foul trouble.

“If they’re going to take away the three-point line and they don’t have a ton of shot blocking, just get to the rim,” Young said. “We had a determined group that did that, and that was the difference in the game. It was a good response after a kind of slugfest in the first half.”

Traore scored 14 of his 20 points after BYU made its adjustment late in the first half.

In total, BYU scored 46 of its 77 points in the paint and shot 12-16 on layps and dunks. When WVU tried double-teaming the post midway through the second half, BYU’s three-pointing shooting finally came around and three-straight treys put the Cougars up 61-37 with eight minutes to play.

WVU basketball concludes its two-game road trip at Utah Tuesday night. The Utes, led by former WVU coach Josh Eilert, knocked off Arizona State 99-73 Saturday evening. Eilert was named Utah’s interim head coach last month.