#20 Texas Basketball notched their 21st win on the season, 82-81 over the West Virginia Mountaineers on Saturday in Morgantown. Timmy Allen led the Longhorns in scoring with 26 points and 10 rebounds. Marcus Carr who found himself in foul trouble early, scored 15 points in a gritty team win at the WVU Coliseum. Senior guard Jase Febres had his best game in quite some time with a 14-point performance.
Junior Brock Cunningham was ejected after four minutes of play for a questionable flagrant-two. Despite the loss of Cunningham, the Longhorns put together an impressive first half showing, clicking offensively. Texas was able to move the ball with purpose, consistently finding the open shooter, or cutter. While it seemed everyone was hitting their shots early, especially from behind the arc (3/3 on 3PA through the first 10 minutes) turnovers grew to be an issue in both halves of play. The lights-out shooting affair, with 18 combined first half points from Andrew Jones & Timmy Allen, proved to be enough to take a 6 point lead into half, 43-37.
At the start of the second half, the Texas offense sputtered, going scoreless from the 18 minute mark to the 13 minute mark. During the first 7 minutes of the second half, Chris Beard’s team amassed just three field goal attempts. The Longhorns had blown a 6 point halftime lead on the road, and found themselves down 57-50 with 13 minutes left in the game. A minute later, Coach Beard made the tough decision to put Senior G Marcus Carr back into the game with 4 fouls hanging over his head. Coming out of the timeout, Carr hit a critical three pointer to cut the Mountaineer lead from 10 to 7 points. From this point on, Timmy Allen took the reins and rallied his team. Texas began to cut down on careless passes on offense, and slowly began to chip away at the lead. At the 4 minute mark Allen hit two free throws to give the the Longhorns a 74-72 lead, their first since halftime. 20th ranked Texas was able to hang on for the win, behind a stellar second half performance from Allen. The senior forward compiled an impressive statline, going for 26/10/3, 7/9 from the field and 12/16 from the line.
Outside of the nearly scoreless 5 minutes in the 2nd half, the Texas offense was as impressive as it’s been all season. Not a perfect showing by any means, but a gritty, much-needed win with two regular season games remaining and the postseason looming. Texas moves to 21-8 on the season with a 10-6 record in Big 12 play.
