West Virginia Misfires and is Crushed by No. 25 BYU

The West Virginia Mountaineers (17-12, 8-10) fell to the No. 25 BYU Cougars (21-8, 12-6) Saturday night 77-56.

West Virginia head coach Darian DeVries sat courtside with play-by-play caller Tony Caridi and analyst Brad Howe to give his thoughts on the loss to the Cougars.

Overall thoughts on the game

I thought we had the game going exactly how we wanted. We had the crowd out of it. We were trying to slow it down in their building here, but very similar to the Texas Tech game where we really controlled the first 17 minutes of the first half. We had actually come out of a timeout with three minutes to go and remined them about Texas Tech, ‘we got to finish this half off defensively and make sure we get good shots to finish out the half,’ and unfortunately, it just didn’t happen, and then we allowed them to take a six-point lead into the half.

Still, we’re right there. They only scored 25 points in the first half for a team that gotten 90 the last three games. So, we felt like, defensively, guys were doing everything we need to do. Offensively, obviously, we got to convert and make sure we score enough but went in the locker room felt good about how we were defending them, and then in the second half, they went to more (junior guard Richie) Saunders driving it in the second half, who’s a little bit more bigger and physical, and he was able to get to the rim a little bit more and finish. That started the flood gates a little bit.

We knew we had to play one-on-one in the post because of all their shooting. First half, we did ok, we gave up a couple, but we were willing to live with that. In the second half, I thought he (senior forward Fousseyni Traore) was really the difference in the game that broke it open. We came and doubled a couple of times and they kicked it out for threes and they made them. So, that was kind of the dilemma we were in there whether to play one-on-one or double and neither strategy worked in the second half.

Second half defense

I just thought defensively it was very similar [to Texas Tech], we just didn’t have quite the same edge we had in the first half, kind of that toughness in keeping the out of there that we had in the first half, and then it started to get away from us. Then, the missed shots lead to transition and now you’re in trouble because once they started playing in transition off of some our misses, you can see us just getting deflated a little bit and our clock wasn’t as good and now all of a sudden because they were hitting threes and getting downhill.