MORGANTOWN — West Virginia walked out of the Suncoast Credit Union Arena on Wednesday night with an 0-2 record in the Fort Myers (Fla.) Tip-Off and one giant missed opportunity to knock off 24th-ranked Virginia.
The Cavaliers sealed their 56-54 victory in the final seconds with two free throws and a huge offensive rebound by Ryan Dunn in between them, but the Mountaineers had so many miscues over the first 39 minutes that were just as crucial as the final seconds.
“We tell them all the time we have a very small margin for error, so you’ve got to be careful,” WVU head coach Josh Eilert said on his radio postgame show. “At the end of the day, if we get a rebound here and there, we’ve got a heck of a chance to win that game.”
WVU (2-3) got plenty of rebounds in this one, 41 of them to be exact, which was 13 more than Virginia (5-1) finished with.
Yet with 2.3 seconds remaining, the Mountaineers couldn’t secure the game’s most important one. Reece Beekman made the first of two free-throw attempts to give the Cavaliers a 55-54 lead, but his second attempt came off the rim hard on the right side.
WVU’s best rebounder, Jesse Edwards, was in position and had a good box-out on Dunn, but the shot came off just deep enough for Dunn to get in the air and snatch the ball away from Edwards, who was trying to reach back over his head for the rebound.
Dunn was fouled with 0.4 seconds left. He also went 1 for 2 at the line for the final score.
It was the final nail in the Mountaineers’ coffin, but there were so many other points to be made, or in this case, the fact that WVU went a long time with no points from anyone else other than Edwards and teammate Quinn Slazinski.
Neither team scored a point more than four minutes into the game. Edwards finally broke the drought with a dunk on an inbounds play at the 15:48 mark of the first half. From there, it was literally him and Slazinski against the Cavaliers.
The duo scored WVU’s first 15 points. By halftime — Virginia led 26-23 at the break — Edwards and Slazinski had scored 21 of the Mountaineers’ 23 points.
Pat Suemnick came off the bench to score the other two, but no other WVU starter other than Edwards and Slazinski scored a single point until there was 11:41 left in the game.
“I looked at the box score at halftime, and Seth (Wilson) JoJo (Harris) and Kobe (Johnson) couldn’t make a shot,” Eilert said. “We certainly want to get Jesse as many touches as possible, but the shooters have got to shoot. I told them that, they need to go out there with confidence and make a shot.”
WVU also committed 16 turnovers that led to 18 points for Virginia. Some of the turnovers came from simply getting the ball stolen away near midcourt, while others came off deflected passes or players slipping and falling and losing control of the ball.
Edwards, who scored 17 points and added nine rebounds, picked up his fourth foul halfway through the second half and was summoned to the bench, while Slazinski had a heated exchange with Virginia guard Isaac McKneely that ended up with a double technical foul being called.
McKneely, a former two-time West Virginia high school Player of the Year out of Poca, finished with eight points, but was just 2 of 9 shooting from the floor.
Through all of that adversity, WVU was able to claw back into the game. Trailing 40-33 with 10:22 remaining, Wilson knocked down two 3-pointers and Johnson hit another one that gave WVU a 42-40 lead. Slazinski added another three while leaning away from the basket and off balanced to tie the game at 45.
“I tried to instill some confidence in them at halftime and let them play a little more free,” Eilert said. “Seth did a heck of a job and hit a couple of shots there that really turned the tides in our direction. At the end of the day, it was just a disappointment.”
In the final moments, Slazinski, who finished with 17 points and five rebounds, nearly came to the rescue when he was fouled while attempting a three, and he made all three free throws to tie the game at 54 with 36 seconds left.
Virginia ran 27 seconds off the clock before Dunn missed a 3-pointer, but Leon Bond came away with the crucial offensive rebound and got the ball to Beekman, who was fouled by Slazinski. Moments later, it was Dunn’s offensive rebound off Beekman’s missed free throw that ended any hope for the Mountaineers.
“I mentioned to them that I was really proud of the way they competed,” Eilert said. “It sucks getting on that airplane and coming back 0-2. We do have a lot of things to build on, but we have no moral victories. We have to press forward and accept the challenges that we have and try to win more games.”
