Texas rolls to 94-58 win over WVU
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MORGANTOWN -- If West Virginia's men's basketball team doesn't return to Texas to play in its Moody Center for a hundred years, it will be fine with them.
Talk about a House of Horrors, this has been a torture chamber for the Mountaineers in their two trips, the second of which was played on Saturday afternoon. The clock said it ended at about 5 o'clock Eastern time but in reality it ended closer to 3:05 p.m. when the Longhorns' Dylan Disu canned a long 3.
That was like opening a lion's cage as the Texans, angry at having been upset on their trip to Morgantown a month ago and furious as they came into the game with three losses in their last four games, punished the Mountaineers, 94-58.
That is even a worse loss than was suffered in that very same building a year ago, 94-60. In two games there, WVU was outscored 188-118.
"It felt like deja vu, looking at this box score, thinking back to last year in this arena," coach Josh Eilert said of the defeat.
The only good that came out of this is that there's a good chance it may be another 100 years before they play Texas in Austin, for the Longhorns are headed for the SEC and WVU is heading for TCU to face another road challenge.
Willie Nelson may have liked being back "On The Road Again", but while WVU may try to live by the cliched sports axiom "There is no I in team"", they have invented an axiom of their own, that being "There is no W in road."
WVU is now 0-9 away from the Coliseum this season, five of those losses in Big 12 play, and you have to go back nearly a year to find their last true road win, that coming on Feb. 27, 2023 at Iowa State.
Eilert was willing to fall on his sword with this one, admitting telling his players in his postgame talk that "I didn't have you guys ready to play. That's on me."
Certainly, the head coach - be he an interim or a veteran coach - bears responsibility when his team is embarrassed as this one was, but he had a whole lot of company to take blame in that locker room.
Gen. George Custer had a better defense at Little Big Horn than WVU had in Moody Arena.
Texas shot 51% for the game, 47% from 3 … but in the first half it was literally ridiculous as the Longhorns scored 55 first-half points, making 67.5% of their shots, including 8 of their 15 3s.
Which brings us back to that first 3, from Disu, who finished with 27 points. Actually, he had a career high with 19 with still 7:46 left in the first half.
Eilert noted it was similar to the way WVU got hot early against Kansas and everything seemed to be going into the basket.
But you can't just blame this on WVU's inefficiency, turning the ball over 15 times to 5, giving up 29 points to 6 in turnovers, 17 fast break points to 6 certainly carries a lot of blame with it.
But Texas was spectacular on offense, putting together an astonishing 28 assists, assisting on 77% of their baskets. WVU had assists on 28% of theirs.
"They were the aggressor, 100% the aggressor. They took it to us. It was a physical game, I understood that was the game plan, and when they are physical with us we struggle. We struggled against Houston, we struggled against UMass," Eilert said.
But there's nothing physical about hitting 3s or nothing physical about getting those assists. That was pure skill.
The first half was an awesome display wrapped in an awesome display for the Longhorns. At the time he alone led WVU, 19-17. By the time the half ended the Texans, shooting 67.5% in the first half had built their lead to 55-30 in what was as dominating a half as you would ever want to see, especially if your name was Josh Eilert and you were coaching the losing team.
There were long 3s and thundering dunks all afternoon long for Texas.
And there was Max Abmas, who with the final Texas basket of the first half soared into fourth place among all-time NCAA scorers.
He finished with 19 points as Texas put five players in double figures.
The name of the man he surpassed for fourth?
Oscar Robertson, the Big O. Of course, Robertson didn't play five years and he didn't play 147 games like Abmas.
He played 88.