West Virginia
Mountaineers look to continue winning ways at home in matchup with Kansas State – WV MetroNews
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Following a two-game road trip that spanned five days, West Virginia returns to the friendly confines of Hope Coliseum to welcome Kansas State at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.
The Mountaineers (13-7, 4-3) notched their first victory outside of Morgantown last Wednesday by defeating Arizona State, 75-63. WVU then suffered its third lopsided loss at a top 10 opponent in Big 12 play, falling 88-53 at No. 1 Arizona on Saturday.
Now comes the first of two regular season contests against Kansas State, which has struggled this season, in particularly in league play. The Wildcats (10-10, 1-6) have allowed at least 78 points in every Big 12 game and are surrendering an average of 85.9 points to conference foes.
On the flip side, Kansas State leads the league with an average of 18.7 assists and ranks in the top half of the Big 12 with an average of 84.1 points.
“We need to be efficient offensively, regardless of the raw number,” WVU first-year head coach Ross Hodge said. ”You look at our Arizona State game, we were incredibly efficient with points per possession and we were able to hold them to under a point per possession, which is what you want to do. I don’t think it’s to our benefit to get into an up-and-down, high possession and high-scoring game against a team like Kansas State. I feel like that’s when they’re at their best. But we also have to able to take advantage when we do have opportunities in transition. We need to be opportunistic and can’t turn it into a complete half court game only, because it’s hard to score in the half court.”
The Mountaineers were held to fewer than 60 points for the third time in Big 12 play against unbeaten Arizona and shot a season-worst 34 percent from the field in the setback (22 for 64), which followed two straight games with better than 50 percent shooting in victories over Colorado and the Sun Devils.
In four Big 12 road contests to this point, the Mountaineers are shooting 41 percent from the field, whereas they’re converting at a 48.7 percent clip in three league games at home.
While that at least partially can be attributed to varying levels of competition, WVU is 1-3 on the road, 0-4 in neutral site games and 12-0 at home.
“You have to protect home floor. There has to be a certain level of urgency to protecting that, because it’s hard to win on the road and hard to win on the road in this league in particular,” Hodge said. “You look at the start we had and three of your first four road games are against top 10 teams in the country. There needs to be a heightened sense of awareness to protecting home court, and I’ve told our guys they need to take pride in it. But just because we’ve been good at home to this point doesn’t mean we’re going to go win tomorrow.”
To give itself the best opportunity at another home triumph, the Mountaineers will look to slow down the Big 12’s leading scorer in 6-foot-4 guard P.J. Haggerty.
Haggerty is averaging 23.4 points and has scored more than 20 in 15 games, while reaching double figures in all 20 contests. He shoots almost 49 percent from the field and is second in the Big 12 with 152 free-throw attempts and third with 110 made foul shots.
From his time as coach at North Texas, Hodge is familiar with opposing Haggerty, who played at Tulsa and then Memphis while averaging north of 20 points each of the last two seasons.
“He’s an incredible individual talent. He does such a good job of drawing fouls,” Hodge said. “They do a good job of putting the ball in his hands in space and he has shooting around him. He’s an extremely tough cover. He has great touch in the midrange. He puts so much pressure on your defense. You have to have really good discipline to make sure you’re showing your hands and not picking up cheap fouls.”
KSU head coach Jerome Tang may be forced to rely on Haggerty even more as the Wildcats have been short-handed of late and will continue to play without their second-leading scorer in swingman Abdi Bashi Jr.
Bashi averages 13.2 points and leads the squad by a wide margin with 67 three-pointers, but recently underwent surgery to repair a stress fracture in his foot and has missed the last two games.
Forward Khamari McGriff has also missed the last two games, though he was labeled questionable for last Saturday’s 24-point home loss to Kansas. McGriff averages 10.2 points and 4.3 rebounds and shoots 74 percent from the field. In the two most recent games he played, the 6-9 McGriff scored 29 points and made 14-of-16 field-goal attempts.
“McGriff is day to day and one you won’t really know about until you show up that night,” Hodge said. “Coach Tang does a great job of giving all those guys confidence, so you know if they’re on the floor, they’re going to be playing with a certain level of confidence. They’re playing with a level of freedom that maybe they weren’t playing with when they had certain substitution patterns. They can put a lot of pressure on you in a lot of different ways.”
WVU remains the lowest-scoring team in the Big 12 at 72.3 points, but is second to Houston in the conference in scoring defense by allowing 64.3 points.
While Treysean Eaglestaff has increased his production from non-conference play to become the Mountaineers’ second-leading scorer at 10.6 points, the team’s top scorer, guard Honor Huff, has struggled of late.
Huff is averaging 16.3 points, but across seven Big 12 games, he’s shooting 34.2 percent (27 for 79) and 30.6 percent from long range (19 for 62). In the most recent two-game road trip out west, Huff was held to 18 points on 6 for 24 shooting, including 4 of 17 from deep.
“The game always opens up for good players,” Hodge said. “Don’t feel like you have to press to get the look and then when you get the look, you kind of press and rush a little bit because you anticipate I may not get this again, so I need to make this one.”
— — — — —
For the majority of Big 12 play thus far, Hodge has elected to utilize an eight-man rotation. He’s gone with a starting lineup of Jasper Floyd, Huff, Eaglestaff, Brenen Lorient and Harlan Obioha, while regularly utilizing Amir Jenkins, DJ Thomas and Chance Moore in a reserve role.
With the outcome all but decided last Saturday, Hodge inserted Morris Ugusuk for 11 minutes at Arizona, most of which came in the second half.
He did not, however, make it a 10-man rotation and count on Jackson Fields, a 6-8 Troy transfer who has played in nine games, including three within the Big 12.
Fields, who did not make his WVU debut until November 30 against Mercyhurst as a result of offseason wrist surgery, has not seen action in three straight games. He last played 10 minutes in a loss at Houston on January 13.
Hodge provided an update Monday on Fields and indicated options are being weighed for what’s to come in the near future.
“No setbacks or nothing wrong with him, per se,” Hodge said. “It’s been a combination of Harlan has played really well in Big 12 play and Lorient has been good in certain situations. Because of who we’ve played, we’ve decided to play Chance at the [power forward] more. He gave us a big thrust early. He missed a lot of time and he still is trying to get all the way back from the surgery that he had. Some of it is just trying to continue to get his grip strength back in his arm. There were no restrictions from a basketball standpoint, but he was still dealing with limitations in the weight room.
“We’re trying to work him back into it, while being mindful that he probably is at the threshold of playing in too many games to receive a medical redshirt. We haven’t made any decisions on that. There are no finalities, but there is an awareness that if he plays in a few more games, then that option is completely off the table. We are being cautious with that decision right now. If he were to play in a couple more games, that’s out the window. Just trying to see where his minutes could come, where he can help us, can he get 100 percent comfortable and if it’s 2 or 3 minutes a night, is that worth him burning a year of eligibility? That’s kind of where we are weighing everything with him right now.”
Fields is averaging 4.3 points and 3.4 rebounds across 14.2 minutes.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) – West Virginia Virtual Academy celebrated its second graduating class Tuesday at the Clay Center.
The ceremony featured a keynote speech and performance from West Virginia native and season six winner of America’s Got Talent’ Landau Eugene Murphy Jr., where he set out to inspire the class.
The class graduated 140 students, with eight earning a Promise Scholarship and 26 intending to attend college in the fall.
The academy’s director Doug Cipoletti said the virtual learning is about more than sitting behind a screen.
“Then we provide this [ceremony] where kids can actually come together and meet one another and build those relationships,” Cipoletti said. “So yes, we’re a virtual school, but there’s a lot more to it than just being behind a computer and I think that really shows today.”
West Virginia Virtual Academy is a K-12 school.
Copyright 2026 WSAZ. All rights reserved.
West Virginia
West Virginia Democrats have an open competition at the top of the state party – WV MetroNews
West Virginia Democrats have a competition for leader of the state party.
Teresa Toriseva, who currently serves as first vice chair of the West Virginia Democratic Party, says she is running for the top spot currently held by Mike Pushkin, who also serves as a state delegate from Charleston.
“This is not a civil war within the Democratic Party. On the contrary, the party is quite unified in message and in mission. And that’s what I found as I’ve been campaigning to run for chair, and I’ve never believed it to be more true,” Toriseva said on MetroNews Midday. “It’s an exciting time for what is a growing, robust opposition party.”
But, “There has been a call for us to prepare for the future better and differently than the past and one of those things that I’m going to be focusing on is building relationships with coalition members from groups that think like us, groups that want to work together with us, from labor to women’s groups to organizing groups that are on the ground doing the work, bringing messages to voters.”
Toriseva is a Wheeling attorney who ran in 2024 for state attorney general, losing in the general election.
Democrats, which used to be the dominant political party in West Virginia, now have almost 327,000 registered voters in the state, about 27% of the overall number of registered voters.
The Republican Party has more than 521,000 registered voters, about 43% of the total number.
Toriseva says Democrats have had a successful period of candidate recruitment that can serve as a base for revitalization.
“Democrats are back, and does that mean we’re going to look like we did a decade ago? No, it’s a new party, and we’re moving forward in a new way, but the future is going to look very different than the past,” she said.
Democrats, under the direction of their own bylaws and state code, are having an organizational meeting at 3 p.m. Saturday in Charleston. The meeting’s focus will be on the election of officers. The meeting will be broadcast to the public via wvdemocrats.com/live
Toriseva has worked alongside Pushkin as one of the top officers of the party for the past several years.
“It’s either have an election now or anoint the incumbent for four more years, and so I do think that elections are healthy, that competitive elections are a sign of a growing and robust party and I don’t think that it’s any indication of a civil war,” Toriseva said.
Pushkin, in response, agreed that anyone is entitled to run for chair and make their case to the members of the executive committee.
And he said the resurgence of the West Virginia Democratic Party has been the result of the hard work of county committees, labor organizations, women’s clubs, Young Democrats, grassroots activists, candidates and countless volunteers across the state.
“What leadership does deserve credit for is creating a plan, bringing people together around that plan, and providing the tools and support necessary to execute it. Our record-breaking candidate recruitment effort did not happen by accident,” Pushkin said.
He said party leaders developed an organizing strategy, held weekly recruitment calls, engaged county leaders and allied organizations, launched the first large-scale candidate recruitment texting program in party history and raised funds to cover filing fees for candidates willing to step forward and put their names on the ballot.
“The question before us now is not who gets credit. The question is whether we continue building on that momentum or allow ourselves to become distracted by internal disagreements while Republicans remain deeply divided,” Pushkin said.
“My focus remains exactly where it has always been: bringing Democrats together, supporting our candidates and taking the fight to Republicans every single day.”
West Virginia
More Mountaineer magic: Guzman’s walk-off single in 10th sends West Virginia to 6-5 win over Kentucky in regional championship – WV MetroNews
GRANVILLE, W.Va. — It was never going to be easy.
Not with the recent history in the Kentucky-West Virginia series, which consisted of four postseason contests decided by one or two runs across the last two years ahead of Monday’s meeting in the Morgantown Regional Championship at Kendrick Family Ballpark.
Sure enough, Kentucky strung together five straight hits with two outs in the eighth, including a three-run home run from Hudson Brown and a solo shot from Ethan Hindle to tie the winner-take-all affair at 5.
But West Virginia has consistently shown the ability to not waver, including one night earlier when it rallied with five runs in the ninth inning to knock off the Wildcats, 11-9.
This time around, the Mountaineers relied on pitcher Dawson Montesa in relief one day after a 122-pitch outing against Wake Forest. Montesa recorded a pair of pivotal outs in the top of the 10th inning, setting the stage for Armani Guzman’s walk-off single to center in the bottom of the 10th that gave WVU a 6-5 victory.
“That was fun. I couldn’t draw it up any better,” second-year WVU head coach Steve Sabins said. “Everything that you love about coaching and everything you love about players was on full display this weekend. It was cinema and had literally everything you can imagine. If you keep going and stick through adversity, then you can do incredible things.”
With the win, West Virginia (43-15) will play host to Cal Poly (39-22) in a best-of-three Super Regional series with the winner advancing to the College World Series. The Mountaineers and North Carolina are the only teams to qualify for a Super Regional each of the last three years.
Guzman’s single came off of Jack Bennett, who began his outing with 14 consecutive strikes and retired six straight Mountaineers over the eighth and ninth innings collectively.
“That was my third at bat against him,” Guzman said. “He got me to pop out on change-ups twice. That at bat, I wanted to see him deeper. I wanted to hit the ball as hard as I could and stay composed.”
The bottom of the 10th began with Brodie Kresser’s leadoff single against Bennett, who then missed with a full count offering to Ben Lumsden that put two on to start the inning.
Tyrus Hall then got ahead 2-0, but popped up a sacrifice bunt attempt for the first out.
Disappointment didn’t last long as Guzman got ahead 2-0 and hit a solid single that allowed Kresser to score the winning run.
It was another memorable postseason moment from Guzman, who a year ago was named MVP of the Clemson Regional.
“He likes the moment. He loves to win,” Sabins said of Guzman. “He’s probably the best athlete in the country. That doesn’t hurt him either. I love his makeup and mentality.”
Game 7 of the Morgantown Regional had a little bit of everything, including a bounce-back effort from Maxx Yehl.
The Big 12 Pitcher of the Year was knocked around and didn’t make it out the first inning Friday in what amounted to an 11-9 loss to UK.
This time around, he worked five effective innings and allowed one run on three hits. The southpaw struck out six without issuing a walk and was efficient, throwing 42 of 67 pitches for strikes.
“Grateful the coaches believed in me to give me the ball,” Yehl said, “and I was excited to get back out there and help the team win.”
After keeping UK (33-23) off the scoreboard in the top of the first, Yehl returned to the mound in the second the beneficiary of a 1-0 lead after a dropped third strike allowed Sean Smith to reach and Gavin Kelly to score from third. Kelly had doubled with one out off Wildcats’ starting pitcher Jackson Soucie.
Guzman’s speed was the biggest factor in WVU doubling its lead in the third.
He reached on a bunt single, stole second on a failed pickoff attempt, moved to third on Kelly’s groundout and crossed the plate on a Paul Schoenfeld groundout.
Brown’s solo home run off Yehl in the fourth allowed the Wildcats to get back to within one run.
Yehl induced an inning-ending double play off the bat of Owen Jenkins to end the top of the fifth and the Mountaineers put together their best offensive inning in the bottom of that frame.
It began with Guzman’s double to left, which was followed by Kelly’s base-on-balls and a run-scoring single from Schoenfeld.
Matthew Graveline made it a three-run margin later that inning when he doubled to plate Kelly.
Kelly’s solo home run in the sixth — his third of the regional and 16th this season — left WVU with a 5-1 advantage. He was named Most Valuable Player of the Morgantown Regional.
“It’s a team MVP. It’s unreal the stuff that everybody on this team did,” Kelly said. “Everyone on the team deserves that. We have a team full of MVPs. It’s hard to kill when you have that.”
Ian Korn made that lead hold up until the eighth despite retiring the first two batters of that inning. Tyler Bell prolonged it with a single, Luke Lawrence followed with another and Brown belted his second long ball of the night to bring UK to within one run.
“We weren’t trained at any point throughout the year to ever think we’re out of a game,” Brown said. “Coach always tells us to keep fighting.”
Hindle made it back-to-back home runs, at which point Korn was lifted for Chansen Cole.
Cole allowed a single to Braxton Van Cleave, but struck out Tyler Cerny to end the inning.
In the ninth, Cole issued a leadoff walk to Carson Hansen, but he was stranded at second.
Kentucky then made consistent hard contact against Cole in the 10th, including several foul balls by mere inches that otherwise likely would’ve gone as extra-base hits.
With Cole and Hindle involved in a lengthy battle, Sabins elected to pull Cole mid at-bat in favor of Montesa, who entered with the count 1-2.
Montesa ultimately walked Hindle, which left Kentucky with runners at first and second and one out. But the right-hander, whose velocity was in the high 90s, followed it up by striking out Van Cleave and got Cerny to fly out to left for what wound up Kentucky’s final at bat of the season.
“I was like I don’t know if we have something left in the tank to get this dude out,” Sabins said. “We might be standing here watching the next pitch as a Wildcat crosses home plate. We rushed Montesa. It wasn’t exactly a genius move, but it ended up playing out well.”
Montesa recorded his second win in as many days by recording the last two outs of the 10th.
Guzman led WVU and all players with three hits.
Brown drove in four of his team’s five runs.
“I would think anybody that watched our team play would have to respect what we’ve been able to do,” UK coach Nick Mingione said. “Not an easy place to play like anywhere on the road in our league, but anybody that follows baseball, I really believe they would say we have gained a lot of respect.”
The third largest crowd in Kendrick Family Ballpark history of 4,607 took in the instant classic.
“It’s been cemented that this is the best college baseball atmosphere in the country,” Sabins said. “Nowhere can provide the energy that just happened in Morgantown. The place was absolutely electric.”
All-Morgantown Regional Team
C: Matt Conte, Wake Forest
1B: Armani Guzman, West Virginia
2B: Gavin Kelly, West Virginia
SS: Tyler Bell, Kentucky
3B: Tyrus Hall, West Virginia
LF: Ben Lumsden, West Virginia
CF: Javar Williams, Wake Forest
RF: Braxton Van Cleave, Kentucky
DH: Luke Lawrence, Kentucky
P: Chansen Cole, WVU
P: Dawson Montesa, WVU
Regional MVP: Gavin Kelly, WVU
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