What West Virginia said about facing KU star Darryn Peterson in Saturday’s game
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- West Virginia executed a 22-2 second-half run to erase Kansas’ halftime lead.
- Darryn Peterson finished with 23 points but battled late shooting woes.
- Coach Ross Hodge credited defense, transition scoring and players stepping up for win.
Kansas freshman Darryn Peterson was on track to score 30-plus points for a second straight game after sinking a 3-pointer to beat the first-half buzzer in Saturday’s KU-West Virginia contest at Hope Coliseum in Morgantown, West Virginia.
The 6-foot-6 freshman from Canton, Ohio, who had 32 points in Tuesday’s 104-100 overtime win over TCU, headed to halftime with 16 points on 5-of-11 shooting. He was 2-of-5 from 3 and 4-of-4 from the line in 18 productive minutes that helped the Jayhawks storm to a 43-39 lead.
The Mountaineers, who rolled 47-32 the final half en route to an 86-75 victory, held Peterson to seven points the final stanza on 1-of-6 shooting. He was 1-of-4 from 3 and 4-of-4 from the line while playing 13 of the final 20 minutes.
Was West Virginia’s focus the second half to shut down Peterson, KU’s leading scorer who finished with 23 points on 6-of-17 marksmanship (3-of-9 from 3, 8-of-8 from the line)?
“That’s going to be everybody’s plan. He’s a projected No. 1 pick. He has a lot of savvy to his game,” said West Virginia senior guard Honor Huff, who scored 23 points on 5-of-12 shooting (4-of-11 from 3, 9-of-11 from line) in 39 minutes.
The 5-foot-10 Huff, who is from Brooklyn, New York, had 17 points in 20 minutes the final half.
“Shout out to Jasper (Floyd). That was his assignment,” Huff added. “I think he did a good job, especially in the second half of being where he needed to be, early in the gap and getting out to him and causing havoc on his game plan of what he wanted to do. He was very disruptive.”
Floyd contributed nine points in 20 minutes. The 6-3 senior played 18 minutes the final half.
“I think it was us just executing the game plan defensively,” Huff stated of the Mountaineers (11-5, 2-1) outscoring KU by 15 points the final half after trailing by four at the break. “We were scoring, obviously. We were efficient, too. So it was just more about stopping them from scoring. I think we did a way better job in the second half of kind of cutting their water off a little bit more than we had in the first half.”
To be fair, Peterson again appeared to be battling the onset of cramps late in the game.
Peterson took his first breather of the second half with 13:43 to play and KU leading 59-51. Twenty seconds later, the Mountaineers scored their first two points of a back-breaking 16-0 run that stretched to 22-2.
Peterson returned at 12:34 with KU holding a 59-56 lead. He missed a 3 at 12:17, then lost the ball out of bounds for a turnover at the 10:55 mark, KU trailing 60-59. Peterson headed to the bench with 6:41 left and KU down 70-61. He returned with 2:21 to play and KU lagging 75-67.
Peterson then knocked down a 3, his only bucket of the half, cutting the gap to 77-70 at 2:01. He left for good at 1:28 with KU still down seven.
There was no discussion of Peterson’s cramping after the game, though a member of KU’s radio crew noted that Peterson used a massage wrap on the bench at one juncture down the stretch.
Of Peterson’s outing, coach Bill Self said: “I thought Darryn was aggressive. (He) didn’t make shots, (but he) still gets 23 in 30 minutes.”
First-year WVU coach Ross Hodge was confident the Mountaineers would prevail despite Peterson’s productive first-half performance and KU’s second-half lead of eight points.
“I was telling our team when we were down eight … I said, ‘We’re still going to win this game, but we’re going to look back at the stretch that has got us in this hole, and we’re all going to be very disappointed with how we’ve executed defensively up until this point,’” said Hodge, head coach at North Texas last season.
“I’m not one of those guys that only wants to talk about what we didn’t do. You’ve got maybe the first pick in the NBA Draft over there. You’ve got a Hall of Fame coach. You’ve got really good players. They’re impacting your ability to execute,” Hodge added.
Hodge said the 22-2 run was almost surreal.
“This group has always had a ton of character, a ton of belief, but then you actually have to do it,” Hodge said. “Guys stepping up. You’re in that moment and it’s teetering. Trey (Eaglestaff) jumps up and makes two monster 3s, and you’re able to start getting foul pressure on the rim. And then you can start stringing some stops together.
“You get in that state of … my wife’s back there (in the interview room) and she’s a yoga instructor. You get in that flow, that state of you’re just flying around defensively. You are not having to think, but you are thinking. It’s almost like a subconscious level of reacting and being aggressive and not having to be a little frozen on what’s happening out there.”
Hodge noted that “we did it with the defense. When you are able to get stops, now you’re playing in transition, you’re getting mismatches, you’re getting cross-matches, you get rolling a little bit. Now you’re scoring. Now they’re playing against your set defense. And so I think some of it is just the experience of the group and the reps and being in these environments and being in these games, and we’ve still got a long way to go.”
Hodge’s Mountaineers, a surprise at 2-1 in the league, will next meet Houston on Tuesday night in Texas. KU, which fell to 11-5, 1-2, will play host to undefeated Iowa State at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Allen Fieldhouse.
