Texas @ West Virginia preview

Last Meeting ( Jan 5, 2019 ) West Virginia 54, Texas 61

In a season filled with many disappointments, West Virginia coach Bob Huggins felt his club hit a new low Monday against Texas Tech. The Mountaineers will try to summon up the energy they showed last weekend in a win over Oklahoma when they host Texas on Saturday.

West Virginia was flattened 81-50 by the 18th-ranked Red Raiders, making just nine field goals - its fewest in a game in 77 years - and committing 26 turnovers while getting routed by 31 points on the road for the second time this season (TCU on Jan. 15). "We've never gotten beat like this before," Huggins said during his postgame radio show. "Even the team that won (13 in 2012-13), they played. They tried. At least you could go to the bench and somebody would come in and play harder than the guy that you took out. We're putting guys in who aren't playing as hard as the guys we take out - and the guys we're taking out is because they're not playing hard." Texas is coming off arguably its best offensive game of the season in Wednesday's 84-72 home victory against then-Big 12 co-leader Baylor - its most points scored in a Big 12 game this season. Senior guard Kerwin Roach II scored a game-high 21 points on 7-of-9 shooting as the Longhorns shot 55.1 percent from the floor - their second-highest single-game mark this season (58.7 versus Grand Canyon on Dec. 15).

TV: 8 p.m. ET, ESPN2

ABOUT TEXAS (13-10, 5-5 Big 12): Roach (team-high 14.9 points, 4.6 rebounds, 3.3 assists), who was 2-of-3 beyond the arc Wednesday, topped the 20-point mark for the third time this season and 10th time in his collegiate career as the Longhorns snapped a six-game losing streak to the Bears. Sophomore guard Matt Coleman III (10.3 points, 3.5 assists) registered 18 points, hitting 8-of-9 from the charity stripe, and tied a season high with six rebounds while adding five assists in 38 minutes. Freshman forward Jaxson Hayes, a projected first-round pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, is averaging 11.1 points on 75.5 percent shooting, 5.6 rebounds and 2.6 blocks in 26.4 minutes in ten conference games.

ABOUT WEST VIRGINIA (10-13, 2-8): Freshman forward Derek Culver (12.1 points, 8.5 rebounds) was the only bright spot Monday for the Mountaineers, scoring a career-high 23 points, converting 15-of-24 free throws - four shy of a school record held by Bill Morrison against Pitt in 1920, and the most by any West Virginia player since 1922 when college basketball was still using a designated free-throw shooter. "The thing that Derek needs to understand is how much better he can get," Huggins said. "He's doing that really not knowing what he's doing. If he'll listen and he'll learn, Derek will be a special kind of player." Besides Culver's 4-of-10 shooting, the rest of the team was just 5-of-29 from the floor, and to make matters worse, reserve center Logan Routt was ejected in the second half for tripping Texas Tech guard Matt Mooney while Routt was sitting on the bench.

TIP-INS

1. Texas beat West Virginia 61-54 on Jan. 5 as Coleman scored 17 points for the Longhorns and Culver 17 for the Mountaineers. The Longhorns have won two straight in the series after dropping four in a row.

2. The 24 free-throw attempts by Culver were the most since All-American guard Rod Thorn once attempted 23 free throws in a game against George Washington on Jan. 12, 1963.

3. West Virginia made nine field goals in a 30-22 loss at Duquesne on Jan. 7, 1942. The fewest field goals made by a Mountaineer team during the shot-clock era was 10 against Cincinnati on Jan. 30, 2008, a 62-39 defeat versus the Bearcats.

PREDCTION: Texas 77, West Virginia 62