The Yellow Jackets' depth proved to be too much for visiting University of Virginia at Wise as WVSU outlasted the Cavaliers for an 87-79 win Wednesday night in the Walker Convocation Center.
The victory WVSU moves to 9-8 overall and 6-5 in Mountain East Conference play. It also avenged 105-92 loss at Wise back on November 28.
Both teams played without their leading scorer as Yellow Jacket senior
Pat Johnson-Agwu started the game on the bench to rest a minor back injury and UVa-Wise did not dress three starters including junior point guard Michal Seals.
Johnson-Agwu leads WVSU with averages of 23 points and 7.1 rebounds. Besides Seals, who averages 19.7 points and 6.1 rebounds a game, Chance Sheffey and Tajh Eason, both 6-4 juniors, did not play in what was simply explained as coach's decision.
That left the visitors with just eight players in uniform.
Johnson-Agwu did end up seeing less than two minutes of action at the end though as the Cavaliers put up a good fight that ended up forcing a dramatic final few minutes.
In the early going it looked like the Cavaliers were not going to be able to stay in the game with the Jackets as WVSU took a 44-33 lead into halftime.
But Wise fought back and trailed just 59-58 with 10:16 to play and used a 3-point shooting binge down the stretch to stay in contention and finally tie the score at 77-77 with 1:46 remaining. The Cavaliers hit 11 shots from 3-point range in the second half including six in a row at one point.
But WVSU junior
Ernest Jenkins stepped up and reminded the crowd that the Yellow Jackets not only also have some shooters, they hit 56.7 percent from the floor in the second half, but can play some pretty good defense also.
First he hit a 3-pointer from the left side. Then he stepped in front of a Cavalier pass and fed a driving
Frank Agyemang to put the Jackets back in front 82-77 with 1:03 to go.
Gus Stone hot a pair of free throws with 35 seconds left and Johnson-Agwu got on the board with a lay-up off a feed from Stone with 19 seconds remaining.
Meanwhile the Yellow Jacket defense came back to life and forced the Cavaliers to miss four of their final five shots.
Jenkins finished with 20 points, Stone 15,
Jeremiah Moore 14, and
Isaiah Noel 12 to lead WVSU.
The Yellow Jackets next play at rival Charleston at 4 p.m. Saturday.
