Saturday marked the beginning of Big 12 basketball for the Mountaineers but the challenge posed by number three ranked Houston proved to be as difficult as expected, as West Virginia didn't lead throughout the duration of the contest and suffered their toughest loss of the season, 89-55.
The Mountaineers fell behind 7-1 early to start the contest, but a pullup three from Farrakhan shortened the Cougars’ lead to three, until a bigtime dunk from Houston and turnover by RaeQuan Battle led to the first media timeout, the score 9-4.
Quinn Slazinski put the game at 11-7 with a three, but Houston responded immediately with a three of their own to double the Mountaineers score, 14-7.
With nine minutes expired in the first half, Kerr Kriisa found Akok Akok on the skip pass for a three, WVU now down by six.
Just a minute later, a turnover by Kriisa led to a tough bucket by Houston at the midway point of the first half, Houston ahead 20-10. Moments later, an and-one finish extended the Cougar lead to 13, until Kriisa answered with a difficult corner three.
With four and a half minutes remaining in the first half, the Mountaineers found themselves down by 21, more than they’d scored all half, the game now at 36-15.
By the time the half came to an end the score was 48-22 in favor of Houston, in what was West Virginia’s lowest-scoring half of the year. Noah Farrakhan led WVU with just seven points, while Houston’s LJ Cryer had 16 points on 6-7 shooting, including four three-pointers.
The second half didn’t look much better for West Virginia, as they didn’t get their first made field goal for nearly eight minutes. With 12 minutes remaining, the score was 68-29, the largest deficit of the year for the Mountaineers.
The game came to a close at a score of 89-55 for the Cougars, Houston's largest win against a Big 12 opponent ever.
Battle, the back-to-back Big 12 Player of the Week who averaged 27 points through his first three games of the season, finished with just four points. On the bright side, Pat Suemnick set a new career high in points with twelve, the team high.
West Virginia will get their next chance at a Big 12 win on Tuesday, January 9th against Kansas State.
----------
• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.
• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.
• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel
• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan, @ZAndersonJRL
