Initial Thoughts on West Virginia's Win Over Colorado

Sunday afternoon, the West Virginia Mountaineers held on to defeat the Colorado Buffaloes, 78-70 improving their record to 12-3 (3-1) on the season.

Here are a few of my takeaways from today's game.

Jake Auer's role

Because of West Virginia's lack of healthy bodies, Darian DeVries had no choice but to dig deep into the bench and insert walk-on Jake Auer into the rotation today. I actually don't mind giving Auer a few minutes here and there, but he's a liability defensively which was very evident in limited minutes today.

Andre is WVU's best option at the five

Amani Hansberry has shown flashes of what he's capable of this season, but he hasn't strung together several games where he's playing solid basketball on both ends of the floor. Andre is much better defensively and has closed the gap on the offensive end. To be honest, he's produced far more on the offensive end than I ever dreamt him to be capable of.

Zero answers for the trap

I'm a little shocked it took Colorado so long to get into trapping WVU in the halfcourt and pressing fullcourt, but once they did, it caused the Mountaineers headaches. Kansas put that on tape, which Oklahoma State and Arizona both saw and implemented into the gameplan. Colorado was no different. This marks four straight games where West Virginia has had issues beating the press and avoiding traps in the halfcourt.

The free throw line...

West Virginia played at a frantic pace in the second half as they felt Colorado making their big run. There was a lot of bad positioning defensively and careless fouls that put the Buffaloes in the bonus and double bonus extremely early. That being said, there were a few ticky-tack fouls that didn't go West Virginia's way. WVU didn't get a good whistle, but they also didn't play smart with their hands.

More on the whistle

Colorado had 11 turnovers and shot just two free throws in the first half. In the second half, they only had three turnovers but took 28 shots from the charity stripe. When they were forced to actually run offense, they couldn't do anything. The only offense they had was the free throw line.

Big game from Joe

Joseph Yesufu came through in the clutch today for the Mountaineers, with KJ Tenner still on the shelf. He put together his best game of the season, recording 18 points. Many of his buckets came in crunch time or when Colorado put the clamps down defensively, and he bailed his guys out by hitting some tough shots. Huge development for the Mountaineer bench.