The Mountaineers earned a scoreless draw against Coastal Carolina.

MORGANTOWN, West Virginia. — No. 7 West Virginia had a chance to move closer to finishing the Sun Belt Conference regular-season championship when they took the field Thursday night against Coastal Carolina, a team ranked eighth in the 10-team league.

However, the Chanticleers posted their fifth shutout of the season, holding the Mountaineers to a scoreless tie. WVU had an 18-7 shooting advantage but was unable to break through.

“As long as the score was zero-zero, they were happy. We were happy that we had the ball. That’s not enough against a team like this. We used to have many examples of games. They’ve clearly done this before. They did it against JMU and against Marshall. The scout had to avoid being lulled into playing at a comfortable pace. And the score was zero-zero,” WVU head coach Dan Stratford said.

“We didn’t take advantage of the control we had in the first half and didn’t put the team under enough stress in the first half. And what I wanted them to do at halftime, it took us 25 minutes to do it once. We also failed to implement our tactics at half-time.”

The Mountaineers (10-1-5, 5-0-3) had a 13-1 advantage on corner kicks but were unable to beat CCU (3-9-3, 1-4-3 Sun Belt) goalie Tristan Himes. .

“If you put it on a 6ft 6in goalie, it doesn’t do anyone any good. I told them at half-time: “We played short once, we had a chance.” And we didn’t play the short game anymore. The quality of decision-making under pressure, the pressure of not scoring, showed some flaws and some naivety. We haven’t done enough to mix things up and change things.”

West Virginia’s best scoring chance came in the 50th minute when Marcus Caldeira took a free kick from outside the CCU box and sent it off the post.

Graduate student Lorenzo Nunez made his first start and second appearance of the year as a member of WVU’s senior starting lineup. He made three saves.

“They were going to live in short moments, in transitional moments. They were going to be speculative in some of their efforts. They tested it a couple of times and it got the job done.”

West Virginia (18 points) is now three points ahead of Marshall (15 points) at the top of the Sun Belt Conference standings. The Thundering Herd will visit Kentucky on Friday and host the Mountaineers on the final night of the regular season on Tuesday. If Marshall loses to the Wildcats, WVU will receive at least a share of the Sun Belt title.

“They know what the stakes are. They know that we need to catch up in terms of RPI, including after today’s result. They have a really important four days ahead of them to make sure they dust themselves off and recover to the best of their ability and show how much that means when they find themselves in a very hostile environment on Tuesday.

“To be honest, we probably prefer a more open game with a little more transition and a little more flow. I think most teams do this. It will be a completely different challenge than today.”