On Saturday, the West Virginia men’s basketball team lost to Xavier 84-74 on the road in the Big 12/Big East Challenge.
It was not a warm welcome to Cincinnati for head coach Bob Huggins, as his Mountaineers missed an opportunity to add another quality road win to their resume before Big 12 Conference play starts.
While WVU led for nearly 29 minutes of the contest, much of the game felt like a 15-round fight, as the game held plenty of physicality, and lots of back and forth blows, especially in the second half.
The first half saw a barrage of three-pointers go in for the visiting Mountaineers.
The first three-pointer came early in the game when Emmitt Matthews swished a contested shot as the shot clock expired to cut the early Xavier lead to 4-3. After the Matthews three-pointer, Stevenson took over for West Virginia, knocking down three different three-pointers in the first half.
West Virginia went on an 8-0 run backed by three-pointers from Stevenson and Tre Mitchell, paired with a tough layup by Matthews. The run put the Mountaineers up 21-12 with 13:27 left in the half and forced the Musketeers to play catch-up.
With just over 11 minutes left in the first half, Matthews made his second three-pointer of the game when he got a bit fortunate on an unintentional bank shot to make the score 25-16.
The first half was filled with physicality and debatable calls, and that continued when WVU’s Kedrian Johnson got whistled for a technical foul after making a shot in the paint.
The technical foul helped bring the WVU lead down to 33-26, and after a Jack Nunge dunk and a Zach Freemantle hook shot, Xavier brought the score to 33-30 with under five minutes left in the half.
West Virginia quieted the rowdy Xavier crowd with another 8-0 run after Stevenson made another three-pointer and Seth Wilson banked in a three-pointer of his own.
Xavier made a 6-0 run of their own to cut the lead to 41-36 with under a minute to play in the half, but Stevenson banked in a two-point jumper with four seconds left to send West Virginia to halftime with a 43-36 lead.
Xavier opened the second half on a 14-7 run to cut the WVU lead to 55-50 at the first media timeout of the half.
The Musketeers kept the momentum in the early parts of the second half when Mitchell and Jimmy Bell had to sit down with three fouls a piece.
Xavier took advantage of the WVU foul trouble and went on a 6-0 run to go up 56-55 with 12:53 left to play, giving the Musketeers their first lead since the score was 6-5 early in the first half.
The Mountaineers took the lead back with three-pointers by Seth Wilson and Joe Toussaint, but the game had shifted to a tight, pound-for-pound fight where every possession seemed to hold significant weight.
Xavier tied the game at 65-65 with just over eight minutes left when Adam Kunkel made a pullup jumper, but WVU responded with a Wilson layup and a Mitchell free throw to take a 68-65 lead with just under seven minutes to play.
This would be the last time West Virginia held a lead, as Xavier took over down the stretch.
Xavier 7-footer Jack Nunge scored eight points in the last seven minutes, while UTEP transfer Souley Boum scored nine points in the final five minutes to help pull away from West Virginia.
While Xavier played well in the final minutes, the Mountaineers took themselves out of the driver’s seat with one made shot from the field in the final seven minutes.
Xavier defeated West Virginia by a final score of 84-74, as the Musketeers move to 6-3 on the season, while the Mountaineers fall to 6-2.
Xavier’s Boum led all scorers with 23 points, including 16 in the second half. WVU was led by Stevenson’s 16 points, but only two of those came in the second half.
West Virginia will be back in action on Wednesday, December 7th against Navy. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m. from the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown, WV.
