Nov. 14, 2014
Final Stats |
Photo Gallery by Michael P. Reese 
UTEP 65, Washington State 52 (Box Score) 
Vince Hunter scored 14 points and snared a career-high 16 rebounds, and UTEP held Washington State to 35 percent shooting in a 65-52 season-opening win on Friday night in the Don Haskins Center.
The Miners struggled from the field, hitting 34.9 percent of their attempts, as Hunter was 5-for-15 and Julian Washburn was 2-for-12. But they did enough good things elsewhere to beat the Cougars for the second straight year.
"A couple of positive things in the game were that we defended pretty well," UTEP coach Tim Floyd said. "We tried to take out [DaVonté] Lacy. He got a couple of baskets late on us. And [Dexter] Kernich-Drew was another guy we were really concerned with and we did a good job there.
"I thought we were as good as we've been since I've been here in terms of going to the offensive board. A lot of that had to do with Vince Hunter. You have a chance to be a good rebounding team when your small forward is a rebounder. He's so talented. He can do anything he wants to do. He really impacted the game."
The Miners led wire-to-wire in their 64-51 victory at Pullman last season, and they never trailed on Friday night. The game was tied once, at 6-6. After a tense opening 13 minutes, UTEP scored 10 consecutive points to build a 27-15 lead. Washington State rallied to close the gap to six (32-26) at the break.
It was still a six-point game (43-37) about midway through the second half when Omega Harris buried a three pointer, and Hunter scored inside to push the lead back to double digits (48-37). The closest the Cougars could get the rest of the game was nine points.
"I thought the overall team defense was good," Floyd said. "Offensively, I thought we took a step back from our game against Southeastern Oklahoma. I thought we became too individualized. We didn't have the same ball movement. We just kind of lowered our head and drove on one pass. When you try to do more, sometimes you end up getting less.
"I don't remember contested shots in the Southeastern Oklahoma game. I thought they were all great shots. I thought tonight there were a lot of contested shots, and you credit Washington State's defense. But at the same time, I thought we contributed to that as well."
UTEP outrebounded Washington State 46-37, including 17-7 on the offensive glass. UTEP had an 18-4 edge in second chance points. The Miners also enjoyed a commanding advantage at the free throw line as they went 17-for-26 to the Cougars' 8-for-10.
"I love the fact that we won the game at the foul line," Floyd said. "We got there quite a bit."
Earvin Morris (13 points) and C.J. Cooper (11) joined Hunter in double figures. Washburn scored nine points, Cedrick Lang eight and Matt Willms seven.
"Earvin Morris played with a lot of poise," Floyd said. "He made some good shots and had a couple of really fine defensive plays and some great minutes on Lacy in that stretch."
Lacy shot just 3-for-12 and tallied 15 points. Ike Iroegbu and Que Johnson each scored 10 for the Cougars.
It looked like a typical season-opening game, a little ragged on offense but solid on defense.
"I knew we would play hard," Floyd said. "I really like us defensively. Our length is still bothering people with Vince as a small forward and when you've got Matt out there and Hooper [Vint] and Ced and Julian, we're big and we can contest and challenge shots.
"We wanted to play big all night. They forced us to play small. They went really small and they created some problems for us at the end of the half with their small lineup. That's one of the beautiful things about our team, we can play big and we can play small if we need to guard down in size, which we did when we moved Vince to [power forward] and took out one of our bigs."
The Miners had a great crowd of 10,419 on hand for the opener. They'll need more of the same the next time they take the floor versus NM State on Saturday, Nov. 22. The Aggies have been to three straight NCAA Tournaments.
"It's a great, great basketball town. I wasn't surprised that we were over 10 [thousand] and I'm going to be shocked if we don't sell it out for New Mexico State," Floyd said. "You know, they beat us twice a year ago. It would be nice to come out and go play and play in front of a packed house. I'm excited about that game for our kids and [NMSU is] a terrific, terrific team."
