Men's Basketball | 11/17/2016 1:01:00 AM

Box Score WEST LIBERTY, W.Va. – The No. 1-ranked West Liberty University men's basketball team took charge with an early second-half burst here Wednesday night and coasted to an 87-74 win against Davis & Elkins in non-conference action at the ASRC.
Coach Jim Crutchfield's Hilltoppers (3-0) struggled to find the range from the perimeter against the Senators (0-2) packed-in zone defense and settled for a 38-30 halftime lead against their former West Virginia Conference rivals.
A driving layup by D&E's Wesley Sprinkle cut the margin to 38-32 on the opening possession of the second half but West Liberty's Devin Hoehn answered with a 3-pointer at the other end and it seemed to knock the lid off the basket.
After the Hilltoppers' full-court pressure forced a turnover, David Dennis dropped in another bonus bomb for the Black and Gold and the fans settled in for another patented WLU scoring burst.
West Liberty didn't disappoint as Hoehn and Dennis combined to hit 6 straight 3-pointers while keeping Davis & Elkins off the board during a dazzling 3-minute span.
That 18-0 burst turned the Hilltoppers' 6-point margin into a commanding 56-32 lead with 16:26 still to play.
"Devin was feeling it a little bit at the start of the second half," Crutchfield said. "He was shooting it pretty well and I think the biggest improvement in David's game this year is that he's a much better shooter from the perimeter. He was stepping up and hitting those shots with confidence."
Unfortunately for West Liberty, the shooting "magic" vanished as quickly as it appeared. After hitting their first six shots from behind the arc in the second half, the Hilltoppers missed their last 12.
That gave the Senators a chance to chip away at the deficit and, even though the margin never dropped below double-figures, Crutchfield wasn't totally pleased with his team's performance at either end of the floor.
"I didn't think we played with enough intensity on the defensive end in the second half," Crutchfield said. "There are going to be nights when you don't shoot the ball well and we need to be a team that gets defensive stop after defensive stop.
"We ended up 12-of-36 from the 3-point line and of those 36 shots, I'd say all but one or two of them were really clean looks. If we're going to get 36 3-point shots, we need to make 15 or 16 of them. Had we done that tonight, that's the difference between a 13-point win and a 25-point win."
Hoehn had a season-high 27 points to go along with 7 assists and no turnovers to pace West Liberty. Dennis just missed a double-double with 15 points and 9 assists while Zac Grossenbacher rounded out the double-figure scorers with 12 points and 8 boards.
Kevin Bracy-Davis led a balanced attack for D&E with 15 points and 8 rebounds. Kevin Simpson and Jordan McElveen added 12 and 10 points, respectively.
"Give Davis & Elkins credit," Crutchfield said. "They're a good basketball team with experienced players who came in here with a good game plan and executed it. The one good thing we can take away from tonight is that despite the fact that we're capable of playing better defense and shooting the ball much better, we still beat a good basketball team by 13 points.
"Now we need to start working on Saturday with an unbeaten Notre Dame team coming in here for our conference opener. They have a couple of very impressive wins already so we have to be ready to play well."
Tipoff for Saturday's game against the Falcons is set for 4 p.m. at the ASRC.