WEST LIBERTY, W.Va. – The No. 2-ranked West Liberty University men's basketball team buried its 19th consecutive opponent with another 3-point blizzard Monday night as Coach Jim Crutchfield's Hilltoppers hammered Ohio Valley, 134-81, at the ASRC.

West Liberty (21-1, 16-0) rained in 14 3-pointers while making nearly 60 percent of its shots (52-of-90, .578) from the floor in running away from the road-weary Fighting Scots (6-14, 6-11).

“We knew they played at Charleston last Wednesday and then had to travel to (W.Va.) Wesleyan on Saturday while we had Saturday off,” Crutchfield said. “We came into tonight's game as the more rested team and wanted to take advantage of that if we could.”

The Fighting Scots were able to run with the Hilltoppers for the first few minutes, battling to a 13-13 tie on a Kendall Allison jumper at 15:36 of the opening half, but West Liberty answered with a quick 3-pointer by Alex Falk and never looked back.

Falk's bonus bomb ignited a 12-0 Hilltopper run that took all of 80 seconds.

Mike Lopez's 3-pointer capped the blitz, pushing the WLU lead to 25-13 with 14:16 still showing on the first-half clock, and the rout was on.

Despite playing without injured starting guard Tim Hausfeld and key reserve Mark Shadowens, the Hilltoppers poured in 49 more points in the final 14 minutes of the half to take a whopping 74-42 lead into the locker room at intermission.

Crutchfield substituted freely throughout but the lead continued to grow down the stretch before the West Liberty reserves scored the last 9 points of the game to arrive at the final margin.

“I was really glad to see everybody get a lot of playing time,” Crutchfield said. “I thought we shared the ball very well and shot it pretty well from top to bottom. This was a very good game for us tonight.”

Falk led six double-figure scorers for the hosts with 29 points – 23 of them coming in the first half. Cedric Harris added 22 points while Keene Cockburn came off the bench with 19 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 blocks and 3 steals. 

Lopez finished with a WLU career-high 16 points while C.J. Hester weighed in with 15 points and 13 rebounds for his eight double-double of the year. Jeff Yunetz rounded out the double-figure scorers with 10 points.

Allison paced Ohio Valley with 29 points and 14 rebounds.

The Hilltoppers hit the road Thursday night with a 7:30 p.m. test at Pitt-Johnstown.

GAME NOTES

X West Liberty's five reserves nearly split the playing time equally with the starters, accounting for 94 of the game's 200 total minutes

X The Hilltoppers topped the century mark for the eighth time in the last nine games and shot better than 50 percent from the floor for the 13th time in 22 games this season

X West Liberty improved to 110-5 (.957) under Crutchfield when shooting 50 percent or better from the floor

X Falk is just 4 points away from becoming the 40th 1,000-point scorer in Hilltopper history

X Lopez's collegiate career-high came on Feb. 14, 2008 during his freshman year at Fairmont State when he scored 22 points to key the Falcons' 88-79 upset win at West Liberty

X The Hilltoppers extended their WVIAC-record conference winning streak to 56 games and have now won 39 straight WVIAC home games, dating back to the 2008 loss to Fairmont