West Virginia 85, Rutgers 64

By John Antonik for WVUsports.com
January 04, 2012 10:03 PM

West Virginia's Kevin Jones looks for some room to score during Wednesday night's game against Rutgers. The Mountaineers defeated the Scarlet Knights 85-64.

AP photo

Truck Bryant scored 29 points to lead West Virginia to an 85-64 victory over Rutgers Wednesday night in a Big East game at the Rutgers Athletic Center in Piscataway, N.J.

Bryant, coming off a 3 for 16 shooting performance against Seton Hall, was 7 of 13 against Rutgers tonight to go with an 11-for-13 effort at the free throw line.

“We made some free throws early, Truck made some shots early and I thought defensively we played well,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins.

After trailing 8-3 early, West Virginia used a 32-8 run over an eight-minute stretch midway through the first half to turn the game into a blowout.

Rutgers did manage to score the first 10 points of the second half before Jabarie Hinds hit a 3 with 14:36 remaining ended West Virginia’s scoreless drought. West Virginia (11-4, 2-1) was able to get the lead back to 20, and then 25, 68-43, with 8:56 remaining.

“We came out at the beginning of the second half so tentative,” said Huggins.

WVU shot a sizzling 56.8 percent from the field (25 of 44), including 53.8 percent from 3 (7 of 13). Bryant went 4 of 5 from 3 and Aaron Brown, who scored 11 points off the bench, hit both of his 3 point tries.

Deniz Kilicli added 16 points and Kevin Jones had a 14-point, 14-rebound double-double – his 10th double-double of the season and the 22nd of his career.

West Virginia’s 51 first half points were a season high for the Mountaineers.

“We got some breakouts,” said Huggins. “There were some steals that we scored on and some long rebounds that we were able to score on.”

Rutgers got 19 points from freshman guard Eli Carter. The Scarlet Knights shot 25 percent from 3 and turned the ball over 15 times, seven of those coming off of West Virginia steals.

“We made them go where we wanted them to go, finally,” said Huggins. “We’ve been letting people go where they wanted to go.

Rutgers falls to 8-7, 1-2.

West Virginia returns to the Coliseum for an important Big East game on Saturday against Georgetown, now 13-1, 3-0 following tonight’s win over Marquette. Tip off for Saturday’s game is noon.

“I told our guys to get your ice and let’s get home and practice tomorrow at noon,” Huggins said. “A win over Georgetown on Saturday would be huge for us.”

To order tickets log on to WVUGAME.com.

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