Mountaineers return from brief break to face Ohio State Saturday night in Cleveland – WV MetroNews

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The only game in a 14-day span for the WVU men’s basketball team will send the Mountaineers to Cleveland on Saturday night. West Virginia (5-7) meets Ohio State (10-2) in the Legends of Basketball Showcase at Rocket Mortgage Arena, home of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Tip time is set for 7 p.m. and the game will be televised on FOX. It is the final game in a three-game event. Ohio-Davidson and Akron-St. Bonaventure are the first two matchups.

“We’ll kind of look at it as a road game. But it is not a true road game by any means,” said WVU head coach Josh Eilert. “Hopefully Mountaineer Nation shows us that same kind of support that they did for the football team in Charlotte. I think we’ll have a great showing there in Cleveland.”

Following a 91-81 win over Toledo on December 23, players and coaches scattered for a three-day break around Christmas. The team reconvened for practice on Wednesday afternoon.

“It is always a hard game to prepare for knowing that some of your guys have one foot out the door to get home to see family for Christmas.

“Everybody kind of needed to get away and reset their minds and reset their bodies. Some of those nagging injuries from a physical standpoint can be healed up to some degree with three-and-a-half days off. You could tell the legs were not nearly as conditioned [Wednesday]. We’ll have to build that conditioning back up. You could tell there were fresher legs.”

After a 16-19 season last winter, the Buckeyes have won nine of their last ten games. They own victories over Alabama and UCLA. Sophomore guard Bruce Thornton (17.4 points per game) and fifth-year forward Jamison Battle (14.1 points per game) lead four Buckeyes who average double-digits in scoring.

“Both of those guys present challenges. Battle is as good of a shooter at that size that you’ll see across the country. With Thornton, it is going to be a constant challenge to see how we can keep the ball out of his hands. He is a dynamic three-way scorer. He does a lot for their team. And they are a physical team.”

Ohio State is ranked 28th in the NET and they will be the final non-conference opponent in the regular season for West Virginia.

“We’re going to be playing some very, very solid competition, starting with Ohio State on Saturday. We’re then going to Houston, which is No. 1 in the NET, the following Saturday. We’ve got plenty of opportunities in this league to prove ourselves and prove that we belong.”

Eilert said fifth-year center Jesse Edwards remains on track in his rehab from a broken wrist, which was suffered in the UMass game twelve days ago. Eilert hopes that the recent additions of RaeQuan Battle and Noah Farrakhan can continue to bolster a lineup that has been shorthanded in November and December. Battle was named the Big 12 Player and Newcomer of the Week after scoring 29 points in each of his first two games against Radford and Toledo.

“We’ve had our challenges and we are 5-7. That’s the facts. We are 5-7. There’s going to be a lot of people that write us off. I tell these guys all the time, ‘People write you off because of your resume thus far’. We haven’t a hundred percent played what we are capable of playing. I think our best basketball is going to come here in the future. I think it is going to start jelling sooner than later.”

Farrakhan has scored in double digits in his three games since becoming eligible to play following the NCAA’s reversal regarding two-time undergraduate transfers. Eilert says Farrakhan stayed engaged in practice despite having no expectation of being able to play this season.

“Noah is bought in a hundred percent and that is the first step in having a good team player. He is locked into everything we are doing. Never did he stray in any way. Sometimes you see a kid sitting out for a year and they may not be a hundred percent locked in when they know they will not play until the following season.

“When that opportunity presented itself for him, he was ready to go. He hadn’t gotten the reps, by any means, that anybody else had with the first team. He had primarily been working on scout team. But mentally, he was ready to go.”

Since making his season debut against Pittsburgh on December 8, fifth-year forward Akok Akok has seen his minutes increase in each game, maxing out at 24 minutes against Toledo.

“I would love to see him get up to 30 minutes. But we just have to take that day-by-day and figure out what he can handle. Each game and each scenario is different.

“You can see he runs as well as anyone on the floor. He’s going to compete at the highest level.”