West Virginia hopes to move forward from lopsided loss when welcoming Kansas State
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia hopes to wash away the sour taste of Saturday’s 34-point loss at unbeaten Houston when the Mountaineers return to the hardwood at 7 p.m. Tuesday by welcoming Kansas State to the WVU Coliseum.
WVU’s first Big 12 home game can be seen on Big Now on ESPN+, and it comes against a Wildcats’ team that enters having won three straight and eight of its last nine.
Kansas State (11-3, 1-0) handled UCF last Saturday 77-52, allowing the Wildcats to start conference play in strong fashion.
K-State’s three primary scorers are guards Cam Carter (16.2 ppg) and Tylor Perry (15.7) and forward Arthur Kaluma (15.1). Each of the three began their college career elsewhere before transferring to K-State, while Perry and Kaluma are in their first season with the Wildcats. Perry poured in 25 points — his most at K-State — in the win over UCF.
Four of the Wildcats’ 11 victories this season have come in overtime, including impressive results against Big East foes Providence and Villanova.
“They’re not the team that they were last year, but they certainly have a very resilient group that can find a way to win,” said WVU interim head coach Josh Eilert, a former player at Kansas State from 2002-04. “Every time I’d put the TV on and put the ‘Cats on, through a resilient group and that culture, they found a way to win those hard games to send it to overtime or win it in overtime. Credit to them for finishing games and having that discipline.”
After winning 26 games and leading the program to a national quarterfinal in his first season as head coach, Jerome Tang has the Wildcats off to a strong start in his second season.
Eilert expects K-State to strive to often play in transition, something the Mountaineers (5-9, 0-1) are also out to do.
“They’re a really good offensive rebounding team, but on the other side, if they don’t rebound as well on the defensive end. Their lifeline in a lot of ways is their transition offense and trying to get easy buckets, just like we’ve preached here,” Eilert said. “In a half court setting in this league when everybody sets their defense, it gets really tough. We have to figure out ways to run out, get easy buckets and that’s what they’re trying to do as well.”
Next to nothing came easily to the Mountaineers in an 89-55 loss at Houston, a game that was well in hand by halftime for the Cougars, who held a 26-point lead through 20 minutes.
WVU shot 32.1 percent — its second worst mark this season — and allowed the Cougars to shoot 53.1 percent, the first time this season a Mountaineer opponent made more shots than it missed.
West Virginia, which has won only once over the last 30 days, continues to search for more continuity after adding guards Kerr Kriisa and Noah Farrakhan to its lineup 10 games into the season and working in wing RaeQuan Battle starting with the 11th game. Add in a wrist injury to center Jesse Edwards, who has missed the last four games and will likely miss at least a few more, and the Mountaineers have endured a number of challenges that they’ve yet to prove they can overcome.
“I knew chemistry was going to be a problem, especially bringing guys in as late as we did in the summer, but then trying to float guys in midseason has been a challenge in itself,” Eilert said. “We’re working through it each day. I told them we took a big lump and a heck of a loss in Houston to a very good team, but we can’t lose sight of each other and lost faith in each other. We have to pick ourselves up, put our boots on and go to work. That’s what we did [Sunday]. We have to turn the page and figure out a way to not hold on to that and move on to the next one.”
Battle is averaging 21.5 points over his first four games as a Mountaineer, though he was held to four points on 1-for-9 shooting his last time out. Each of his last two games, Battle has been plagued by first-half foul trouble.
“He’s as good as anybody in the country with his pump fakes and he can get people off the ground and put them in a bad position defensively, but he’s so athletic and quick-twitched, it works the other way as well,” Eilert said. “He has to be true to himself, stay on the floor and move laterally as much as he does vertically. That stuff is going to come with some time. A lot of it is exuberance and excitement being out on the floor. He has to play a smarter game on the defensive end.”
Perhaps the only bright spot at Houston was the performance of reserve Pat Suemnick, who put together his second straight solid showing and scored 12 points on 6-for-8 shooting. Suemnick is 10 for 12 with 21 of his 48 points this season over his last two outings. Eilert said moments after the game the 6-foot-8 forward had earned more playing time through his performance.
“I hope those guys have the confidence to know they’re going to help us win just as much as the starting five,” Eilert said. “We need everybody from top to bottom to contribute in a meaningful way. What that meaningful way is, it’s going to be different from one guy to the next. Roles are changing and whatever that role is that can help us win, we need to figure out what it is, pinpoint it and play that role.”
