Mountaineers Upset No. 25 Texas

Jan 14, 2024

MORGANTOWN, WV—The West Virginia Mountaineers with Pat Suemnick, RaeQuan Battle and Kerr Kriisa helped WVU beat No. 25 Texas Saturday night 76-73 at the Coliseum. WVU’s Pat Suemnick in his second start, took his coach’s advice to “go have fun” and finished with a career high of 16 points and 6 rebounds and held on for a close win Saturday night. Kerr Kriisa and RaeQuan Battle added 14 points. Quinn Slazinski had 13 points and helped break WVU’s three game losing streak. WVU (6-10, 1-2 Big 12) were still without starter Jesse Edwards and pulled out the win.

“This should be the expectation of West Virginia basketball,” Kriisa said afterwards. Sumnick said assistant coach Alex Ruoff told him before the game to soak in the atmosphere of a boisterous crowd waving gold-colored towels. This was the last time Texas would appear in a game at the coliseum due to the Longhorns moving to the SEC next year. “He was like, enjoy this. Look around., We’re playing Texas, a ranked team, at home,” Suemnick said, “I tried to come with that mentality.”

The Mountaineers led at halftime 30-28 and outscored Texas 46-45 in the second half.

WVU made 21 of 47 from the floor (44.7 percent) and 7 of 17 from beyond the arc at 41.2 percent. Kriisa was 4 of eight from behind the arc, Slazinski hit 2 of 3 and Akok was 1 of 2 . Tonight’s game was the 7th time this season WVU has led at halftime and the fourth time it has held on to win the game. Being short handed most of the season, WVU usually ran out of gas in the second half. Once Jesse Edwards comes back from an injury WVU will finally have its squad intact.

Texas is now 12-4.