MORGANTOWN — A restructured WVU roster brought some instant offense.
The Mountaineers defense and rebounding, though, is still lacking.
UMass scored 34 fast-break points and dominated on the glass Saturday night at the MassMutual Center in Springfield, Mass. to pull away for an 87-79 victory against the Mountaineers in the Hall of Fame Classic.
“From Day 1 this summer and at my first press conference, I thought that was going to be a problem,” Eilert said on his postgame radio show of the Minutemen’s 47-32 advantage in rebounds. “It’s proven to be a problem night in and night out. That’s on me. Me and my staff have got to figure out a new approach to fix this.”
WVU (4-6) entered the game after an emotional week of breaking news on a daily basis, and that kept right on going throughout the contest.
To sum it up, a federal court hearing in Wheeling on Wednesday opened the doors for WVU to get guards RaeQuan Battle and Noah Farrakhan back on active duty, while point guard Kerr Kriisa also became eligible for the first time this season after a nine-game NCAA suspension.
But, when game day arrived, the school announced Battle would continue to sit out because of the flu.
That didn’t stop Kriisa and Farrakhan from making the most of the WVU debuts. The two guards combined for 35 points and 11 assists. Kriisa played 36 minutes — he cramped up momentarily in the second half — while Farrakhan did his damage in 18 minutes of action.
“He did a lot of good things,” Eilert said of Kriisa. “He made a lot of shots for us. We shouldn’t have to rely on him so much to score the ball.
“Noah was out there really helping us in handling the ball and putting pressure on the rim, but once we get RaeQuan out there, he should be getting that type of number of shots and Kerr’s will get cut back. It’s unfortunate that Rae was sick.”
The other unfortunate news centered around WVU’s Jesse Edwards, who had his worst game of the season, finishing just 1 of 7 shooting with three rebounds.
UMass played a physical game with Edwards, which resulted in a double-technical foul between Edwards and Josh Cohen with 9:12 left in the first half.
“I told the officials that somebody was going to get hurt,” Eilert said. “I know how people play Jesse Edwards, because they know if he’s not in the game, we can be crippled so to speak. They continued to fight and hack and hack.”
Early in the second half, Edwards appeared to hurt his right wrist while going up to catch a lob pass for a dunk and then landed hard on it.
He was out of the game for the majority of the second half, as the Mountaineers erased an 18-point deficit to come back and tie the game at 62 with 6:32 remaining.
WVU made that run from behind the 3-point line. At one point in the second half, the Mountaineers had 20 baskets for the game, with 13 of them being threes.
WVU finished with 14, its most since Jan. 2, 2021 against Oklahoma, and the 79 points scored were also a season high.
The difference was WVU couldn’t stop UMass (6-2) from scoring. The Minutemen scored 19 of their 34 fast-break points in the first half to cruise to a 44-29 lead at the break.
Robert Davis Jr., who had just eight 3-pointers all season, connected on 6 of 8 from behind the arc in this one and finished with a season-high 18 points.
Cohen’s 19 points helped the Minutemen to finish with a 36-24 edge in points in the paint and Rashool Diggins added 15.
Matt Cross finished with a double-double of 13 points and 13 rebounds.
Quinn Slazinski had 20 points for the Mountaineers, 14 coming in the second half. Josiah Harris, who attended his college graduation earlier in the day, before taking a flight to the game, added 10 points.
WVU never held a lead in the second half, but UMass’ lead was just 70-69 after Pat Suemnick tipped in a miss with 3:27 remaining.
From there, Cohen took advantage inside with getting to the line for two free throws and then an and-one 3-point play that gave UMass a 74-69 lead.
UMass then got two crucial offensive rebounds on its next possession that eventually saw Cohen get fouled and made two more free throws for a 76-69 lead, and WVU never challenged again.
“I just told our guys that we can’t wait to fight. We have to fight from the jump,” Eilert said. “I know Frank (Martin, UMass head coach), we worked together. I knew his game plan. He was going to be as physical as possible with us and make everything hard on us.
“He did and did from the jump. It took way too long for us to bow up. I said at halftime, you all better bow up or its going to get ugly.”
