Cincinnati pummels WVU in regular-season finale, 92-56
The Cincinnati Bearcats walked out onto the court at Fifth Third Arena in Cincinnati wearing bright red uniforms for their Senior Day game while West Virginia left the court close to three hours later wearing nothing but red faces as the 2023-2024 regular season came to end with the Mountaineer program swirling in uncertainty.
Cincinnati completely overwhelmed the Mountaineers, 92-56, to leave WVU with a program record 22 losses to go with just nine victories. The Mountaineers finished up the regular season without so much as a single victory outside of Morgantown, finishing 0-13 away from home.
But what it meant for this team from the moment Bob Huggins was stopped on a Pittsburgh street and charged with DUI was nothing less than an endless downward spiral, the damage so severe that it may take years to overcome.
Josh Eilert fell on the knife in the program, accepting the job as interim coach of a team that would lose its best players, re-recruit its roster, suffer through NCAA suspensions and injuries as they were completely undressed and overwhelmed by playing in the Big 12, the best conference in the country.
If one would have thought that as the year went on and the injured or suspended players came back, including the heart and soul of the team in Jesse Edwards, RaeQuan Battle and Kerr Kriisa, that they might show some improvement, that never was the case.
They stunned No. 3 Kansas and upset Texas when it was in the Top 25, that covering the season’s highlights.
The lowlights were nearly every other game, but this final regular season game was as bad as it gets … and to rub salt into the raw wound that this season has left WVU with, they were set to open the Big 12 Tournament on Tuesday against these same Cincinnati Bearcats.
“We’ll see what we’re made of,” Eilert said on his post-game radio interview. “If we do not come out and compete at the highest level on Tuesday, they have to look themselves in the mirror and figure out if they want to play the game of basketball.”
They certainly didn’t look like they did on Saturday, as they made a brief run before the half to cut a Cincinnati lead in half to make it appear they had a chance. But they flushed the rest of the season away in a second half in which the Bearcats did whatever they wanted to do.
They outscored WVU 56-27 in that second half. Think about that for a moment, that’s more than doubling WVU’s output.
Defense? That’s become a forgotten art in Morgantown as the Bearcats became the third team in the last four games to score 90 or more points against WVU.
And it wasn’t so much how many they scored but how efficiently they disassembled whatever defense WVU tried to throw at them. Cincinnati shot 70% from the floor in the second half.
Teams don’t shoot that well in pregame warmups, but then the shots are no easier in pregame warmups than they were against the WVU “noffense.”
Put it this way, Cincinnati scored 48 of its 92 points in the paint.
Nine of Cincinnati’s 36 baskets — one fourth of them — came on dunks, the most spectacular of which came a breakaway off one of WVU’s 16 turnovers with Day Day Thomas taking a lob from Dan Skillings Jr. with one hand as he soared high above the rim and in one motion brought the ball down through the hoop.
But that was how the entire second half of this game went. If Cincinnati threw it at the basket, it went in and it didn’t matter who threw it up there.
The Bearcats rained 3s on WVU when they weren’t dunking and even walk-on Lanen Long had his moment in the sun as he played the final minute and threw in his first career 3-pointer.
Eilert came into the game knowing his days as coach are rapidly dwindling and hoping that his team would find the fire necessary to at least go out with some pride for both players and coach.
“We’re just trying to figure out where our heads are at, what will generate that enthusiasm, that will to win,” Eilert said in a pre-game radio interview. “I tell these guys you are always playing for something. You’re always being judged, your value is being determined and every day on how you handle things.
“It’s kind of a meaningless game in a way,” Eilert admitted, “but in a way it’s not. You have to play every opportunity out and give it everything you’ve got. That’s how you want to approach life.”
But it was Cincinnati, a team that has only the 11th seed in the Big 12 tournament but has been frustrated with nine losses of 5 or fewer points, who found the magic elixir of pride and energy and turned this one into WVU’s third loss of at least 34 points.