Kevin Jones scored 17 points and Devin Ebanks contributed 16 points and 13 rebounds to lead No. 2-seeded West Virginia to a 77-50 victory over Morgan State Friday afternoon in an NCAA tournament first round game at HSBC Arena in Buffalo, N.Y.
Morgan State (27-10) scored the first 10 points of the game and led 17-9 before Jones got things going with a 3 from the corner and a short one inside to reduce Morgan State’s lead to 17-14.
“I felt in the beginning I wasn’t being aggressive enough,” said Jones. “My shows were falling – I was just in one of those zones and I’m glad that it worked out for my team and it got us back into the game.”
“We didn’t attack them,” added West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “We were playing pitch and catch on the perimeter. I think after the first media timeout, we did a much better job of doing what we’re good at doing.”
A Casey Mitchell 3 cut the lead to two, 19-17, and West Virginia tied the game at 19 with 7:03 remaining in the first half on an Ebanks basket. Joe Mazzulla’s three-point play with 5:22 left gave the sixth-rated Mountaineers their first lead of the game, and they used a 16-6 run over the remaining five minutes to take a more comfortable 38-27 advantage into the locker room at halftime.
Ebanks said his thoughts turned to last year’s opening round loss to Dayton last year when his team was struggling early in the game.
“They started off 10 points to our zero,” said Ebanks. “I was just trying to get it going with my teammates. We can’t have another close game. We have to step up – during the game we stepped up and broke it out to a big lead.”
It was an 11-2 run to begin the second half that really opened the game up for West Virginia, now 28-6.
“We have not gotten out of the gate very good in the majority of games,” said Huggins. “For whatever reason, I’m not sure what it is, but I thought we were ready to play. I didn’t think it was a matter of us not being ready to play. I just didn’t think we attacked them very well.”
Jones was 8 for 10 from the floor and also grabbed eight rebounds.
“There are days when some of our guys shoot the 3 pretty well,” said Huggins. “We just try and ham-and-egg it to the one that’s making it that particularly day.”
West Virginia had a 49-38 advantage on the glass and handed out 20 assists on 24 made baskets. The Mountaineers were also 25 of 31 from the line.
Morgan State’s leading scorer, Reggie Holmes, finished with 12 points for the Bears.
“Holmes is a great player as far as his team and his coverages,” said Ebanks, who was assigned to Holmes for the game. “Watching tape of him the last three days, I really tried to study his moves to the basket. Two dribbles in, step back and create an open shot. I was trying to eliminate his touches.”
West Virginia’s tournament win was just the second for the Big East Conference, which took it on the chin yesterday when Notre Dame, Georgetown and Marquette all lost and Villanova needed overtime to defeat 15th-seeded Robert Morris.
Huggins said those performances had no bearing on the way his team played today.
“I didn’t watch any of the games,” he said. “I’m a bad one to ask about those things because I was watching (Morgan State) tape last night.”
West Virginia’s 28 victories is now one shy of the school-record 29 the Mountaineers won on the way to the 1959 NCAA finals. The victory was West Virginia’s seventh in a row and ninth in its last 10 games.
WVU will face Missouri on Sunday after the Tigers defeated Clemson.
By John Antonik
For MSNsportsNET.com
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March 19, 2010