Stop me if you’ve heard this story before -- West Virginia men’s basketball was in position to secure a huge win in Big 12 play that would have gone a long way in earning an NCAA Tournament at-large bid once the postseason begins. But the Mountaineers ended up squandering a lead and dropping a close game in excruciating fashion.
It happened on February 5th in a road game against TCU, and it happened again just earlier this week as WVU hosted BYU in Morgantown. And on Saturday, history repeated itself for the Mountaineers the third time this month.
WVU (15-10, 6-8) travelled to Waco for a weekend road trip against Baylor (16-9, 8-6). WVU gave a strong effort -- they converted eight three-point buckets in the matchup and shot 40 percent from the field to Baylor’s 38 percent, but couldn’t hang on to a lead when they would inch ahead and failed to take advantage of enough opportunities when they presented themselves.
The Mountaineers fell into a bit of a hole late in the first half, and trailed by five points at the halftime break. They would respond with a resilient rally, opening the first four minutes of the next half on a 14-4 run and pulling ahead of Baylor 39-34 with just over 16 minutes remaining in regulation.
But WVU would then quickly lose that lead and end up trailing by as many as six points with 8:24 left in the second half. WVU would go on to re-take the lead -- and then lose the lead -- three separate times over the final stretch of regulation, but managed to even the score to force an overtime period.
But in the end, the Bears had the Mountaineers’ short rotation gassed -- they took the lead to start extra play and would not relinquish it again as they secured an important 74-71 win in league play that will boost their resume and conference tournament seeding as we approach the end of the regular season.
WVU is now 2-6 in its last eight games, with just six games and the Big 12 Tournament remaining to secure enough wins to earn their shot at the 68-team March Madness bracket. How many wins they’ll need is undetermined, but they will likely need at least 3-4 victories during that final stretch.
The Mountaineers were led by senior guard Javon Small, who demonstrated once again his now-standard ability to facilitate massive offensive production -- he tallied 22 points and chipped in six assists in the loss. WVU was also aided by another breakout performance from Toby Okani, who broke double-digits in the scoring column for the second consecutive game. Okani dropped 19 points and added seven rebounds.