A bit of a lift?
The West Virginia University Men’s Basketball Team ended its late season skid by winning two games last week. They picked up a rare road win, 77-71, at Iowa State last Tuesday and picked up an impressive, 76-64, win against Baylor in the Coliseum on Saturday to conclude their regular season. WVU is now 21-10 overall and 9-9 in Big 12 play. That 9-9 mark put West Virginia in a four way tie for third place with Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech. WVU lost all the tiebreakers and is the sixth seed in this week’s Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City where they will meet third seeded Oklahoma in Thursday night’s second game.
The game is on ESPN2 and listed as a 9 p.m. start, but it will almost certainly be later than that depending on the length of the preceding game between Baylor and the winner of Wednesday’s TCU-Kansas State matchup. The Sooners seemed destined to the seventh seed when they trailed TCU by 20 points in Fort Worth Saturday. A Sooner loss would have made for a WVU-Texas Tech matchup at noon on Thursday, but Oklahoma came from a 70-57 deficit in the final 4:39 Saturday to stun TCU 78-76.
WVU would love nothing more to gain some measure of revenge against Oklahoma. OU has a pair of wins against WVU this season including the 69-59 decision in Norman hours after the NCAA Selection Committee had put the Mountaineers on their mid season two line.
A good start to securing a win Thursday would be to work on stopping Kristian Doolittle and Brady Manek. Those two have combined for 72 points in two games against WVU this season. Also worth noting is that combo has only been whistled for four fouls between them in 137 minutes of play.
One would hope that part of Thursday’s game plan includes attacking those two with the ball.
2020 Big 12 Tournament schedule
First Round
Wednesday, March 11
Game 1: No. 8 Oklahoma State vs. No. 9 Iowa State, 7 p.m., ESPNU
Game 2: No. 7 TCU vs. No. 10 Kansas State, 9 p.m., ESPNU
Quarterfinals
Thursday, March 12
Game 3: No. 4 Texas vs. No. 5 Texas Tech, 12:30 p.m., ESPN/ESPN2
Game 4: No. 1 Kansas vs. Game 1 winner, 2:30 p.m., ESPN/ESPN2
Game 5: No. 2 Baylor vs. Game 2 winner, 7 p.m., ESPN/ESPN2
Game 6: No. 3 Oklahoma vs. No. 6 West Virginia|, 9 p.m., ESPN/ESPN2
Semifinals
Friday, March 13
Game 7: Game 3 winner vs. Game 4 winner, 7 p.m., ESPN/ESPN2
Game 8: Game 5 winner vs. Game 6 winner, 9 p.m., ESPN/ESPN2
Championship
Saturday, March 14
Game 9: Game 7 winner vs. Game 8 winner, 6 p.m., ESPN
Note: All times eastern.
