Fresh off their newest 21st ranking in the AP Poll, the Mountaineers dropped their first Big 12 conference game to a team they beat earlier in the season; the Arizona WIldcats.
Coming into the game, the Mountaineers would be without their second leading scorer, Tucker DeVries, once again as well as true freshman KJ Tenner who is out with an undisclosed injury.
Arizona was hot from deep early in the game, making three of their first five threes from beyond the arc at the under-16 media timeout.
The Mountaineers were able to hit a pair of their own to trail 13-10 with Small scoring half of the team’s points up until that point.
The lack of size for WVU really started to hurt the Mountaineers as the Wildcats started pounding the ball inside, scoring 18 points from inside of the paint in the first half.
It was a run late in the first half by Arizona that was created by the lack of scoring for WVU. Going five minutes without scoring a point, Coach DeVries’ squad fell down as many as 13 points before Amani Hansberry scored five straight points to end the drought and cut into the lead.
At halftime, West Virginia trailed Arizona 39-28 with more than half of their points being created by Javon Small who had 12 points and two assists in the first half. Jonathan Powell added six for WVU, and Hansberry had five.
As a team, the Mountaineers only shot 38% from three compared to their opponents 53%. They were also out-rebounded by the Wildcats 20-13.
It was a couple minutes into the second half where the Mountaineers made their run and it came from the least expected hands. After trailing 14 points, West Virginia made three straight three-point shots, the last two coming from Sencire Harris to cut the lead to five points.
Harris started the year 0-27 from three but has made a couple of threes in the past two games.
After an Arizona timeout to stop the run, the teams would battle back and forth a bit before Arizona would pull away from WVU, going on a 11-0 run with under 10 minutes left in the game. The run was enough to extend the Wildcats’s lead to 17 points.
The later parts of the second half would be dominated by the Wildcats who had everything going for them on both sides of the floor.
West Virginia finished the game making only one of their last 11 shot attempts and fall to Arizona 75-56.
Javon Small was the only Mountaineer in double figure scoring with 17 points to go along with six rebounds, and five assists. Okani, Harris, and Hansberry all finished with eight points.
For Arizona, it was KJ Lewis getting it down for the Wildcats, scoring 21 points on 9-13 shooting.
As a team, the Mountaineers gave up 36 points in the paint and were out-rebound 40-31.
For WVU, they now fall to 2-1 in Big 12 play and drop their first game after being ranked like they did the last time the team was ranked in 2022.
The team’s next game is on the road against Colorado on Sunday, January 12. Tipoff for that game is currently set for 3:00 pm. ET.
