No. 9 West Virginia looks to move on from stinging defeat while hosting Northeastern

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — Gabe Osabuohien said he couldn’t shake the images from his head.

The last time the WVU forward took the floor in a game, he was a part of history, just not the kind of history he’d like to be a part of.

“That loss, I definitely thought about it longer than I needed to,” he said.

That loss was a 79-65 setback at Kansas in which the Jayhawks hit 16 3-pointers, which is tied for the most the Mountaineers have ever allowed in any game.

“Even with them making as many threes as they did, I was still more mad at us and our performance, rather than what they did,” Osabuohien said. “If we did what we were supposed to do, none of that would have taken place.”

After the Christmas break, No. 9 West Virginia (7-2) will host Northeastern at 2 p.m. Tuesday in the WVU Coliseum.

Outside of family members of players and coaches, no fans will be permitted inside the arena due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“You only think about the game that night,” WVU point guard Deuce McBride said. “The next day, you move on to your next opponent.”

The Huskies (1-4) were a last-second replacement for Buffalo, which paused team activities after positive COVID-19 tests within its program.

Northeastern, located in Boston and a member of the Colonial Athletic Association, becomes the sixth addition to the Mountaineers’ schedule, although this one did not create the cram session the others did.

“We had a little more time to prepare for this one,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said.

Huggins confirmed Monday his entire team had tested negative for the virus upon returning from the holiday break and would be available for today’s game.

Still, it remains to be seen how well the Mountaineers have recovered from that Kansas defeat.

“Unless they lie a lot, there is nobody in the country that would tell you Kansas could shoot the ball the way they shot the ball against us,” Huggins said. “That’s not them. We were trying to gap everything and keep them in front of us and make them shoot the ball over us because of the way they had shot the ball up to that point. And then they made everything.”

Northeastern point guard Tyson Walker leads the Huskies in scoring at 17 points per game, while forward Jahmyl Telfort is an impressive 10 of 14 from 3-point range this season.

“Their point guard is terrific,” Huggins said of Walker. “I think everything starts and stops with him. They do a great job in their ball-screen series, which is good for us to be able to spend time and work on. He’s really good with the ball-screen stuff. He splits it and he drags it out. He can stop behind it and shoot it. He does a lot of really good things.”

Aside from the annual Big 12-SEC Challenge game — WVU hosts Florida on Jan. 30 — this will be the Mountaineers’ final nonconference game of the season.

WVU will return to Big 12 play on jan. 2, at Oklahoma, before staying on the road with a game against Oklahoma State two days later.

“Quite frankly, we really haven’t played 40 minutes yet,” Huggins explained. “We play for a while and then we let them catch up so we really haven’t had the opportunity to play as many guys as we normally would at this time of year.”

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