MORGANTOWN — West Virginia’s women’s basketball team owned the paint at the Fifth Third Arena in Cincinnati Sunday yet they painted anything but a masterpiece as they escaped with a 84-76 victory over the Bearcats.

The Mountaineers were on cruise control with 5:25 left in the third quarter as they held a 26-point lead in a game that coach Mark Kellogg had sort of designated as a gut check after that brutal loss to TCU on a last second buzzer beater when last seen, but instead of finishing it off as thing of art as, say, Grandma Moses would have done, they played like Grandma Moses as they allowed the scrappy Bearcats back into contention.

In all, 56 of the Mountaineers’ 84 points were scored in the paint, which explains shooting such a high percentage (54%) for the game while Cincinnati scored half that many with 28.

“We scored 80-some points, made some shots, but we certainly didn’t win because of the defensive effort in the second half. That was abysmal. We have to get things cleaned up. Too many fouls, way too many fouls, too many turnovers, lost our way defensively in the second half.

“We shot 54% but we didn’t have to shoot 3s (only 3 of 8 for the game) because we were getting to the paint, so we’ll take it. We’re 1-and-0 on the day, got a road win. That’s better than the alternative.”

As the game started, Kellogg told the audience listening to his pregame show that this game was important because he wanted to see how they reacted to that TCU loss.

“You have to move on,” Kellogg began, saying he didn’t want to talk about the TCU game any more, but added “I’m always interested to see their resolve and what they look like. I told the other day I would hate to play us after a loss, if we do what we’re supposed to do.

“Now if we go the other way, then we’ve got a problem on our hands but you’re supposed to take it out on someone else and take out your frustration from that heartbreaker on Cincinnati.”

And the Mountaineers came out and broke it open midway in the first quarter, a 16-14 lead swelling to 43-26 by the end of the first half and by the middle of the third quarter they opened it to 59-33.

Then Cincinnati came out doubling up on Jordan Harrison, forcing her into eight turnovers to go with her eight assists and 10 points for the game, eating away the lead.

“I thought the end of third was bad and we lost our way there, but we get these leads and it’s like we’re just trying to survive and not thrive in the moment. Drive, keep going. That should have been a 30-plus point win and we coast out of here feeling good and we let them back in and had to work harder than we needed to.”

The hard work did come at the end as the lead melted away as if it were an early spring snow on a day things heated up. From 5:25 of the third quarter to 5:20 of the fourth quarter the lead went from 26 points to seven. To WVU’s credit, they didn’t panic, they simply went back to what had gotten them there, looking inside every time down the floor.

Eight straight points in the paint by MeMe Wheeler, Carter McCray and four from Jordan Thomas finally gave WVU some relief, allowing WVU to work the clock and keep the Bearcats an arm’s length away until the final buzzer went off and they had their ninth straight victory over UC.

Wheeler became the go-to target with her inside play and was high scorer with 17 points, with six rebounds and 4 assists on the plus side of the ledger but that was offset some by four turnovers and going 1 for 6 from the free throw line.

Sydney Woodley and Jordan Thomas came off the bench for 12 points each, making 10 of 12 shots in the paint, while Harrison and Carter McCray each scored 10 with McCray adding seven rebounds.

WVU now stands at 5-2 in the conference that has no undefeated teams left and 15-4 overall while Cincinnati dropped to 2-5 in league play and 7-12 for the season.

The Mountaineers return home on Wednesday to play Arizona State.