MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia has had its fair share of issues on offense and defense for much of the season.
Lately, an inability to slow the opposition has hampered the Mountaineers in a major way.
The latest example came Saturday as No. 12 Baylor shot better than 58 percent in the opening half and hardly let up, finishing 30 for 56 from the field to roll by the Mountaineers 94-81 inside the WVU Coliseum.
“Some of it comes down to closeouts, pick and roll coverage and what we’re trying to do on the back side,” WVU interim head coach Josh Eilert said. “There are things we can clean up, but the most glaring ones for me are the step-in shots off second-chance opportunities. That’s a pretty easy shot to make, especially with the talent they have on that roster.”
While West Virginia (8-17, 3-9) nearly matched the Bears’ field-goal shooting percentage by finishing 27 for 51, the Mountaineers did much of their damage late and scored 30 points over the final 9:53 after the game had all but been decided.
The Mountaineers led early and their last advantage was 12-9 on a Kerr Kriisa three-pointer that marked one of his two baskets.
A JaKobe Walter triple allowed Baylor (19-6, 8-4) to get even and marked the start of an 11-2 spurt in 2:02 that seemingly gave the Bears control of the contest. That run was highlighted by five field goals from five different players — a theme throughout for BU, which had six double-figure scorers and three players score at least 18 points.
“It takes a team to win and if you go into a game relying on one person and he has an off night or the defense takes him away, you’re done,” Baylor head coach Scott Drew said. “It’s great to have that balance.”
The Bears took their first double-digit lead at 37-26 courtesy of a Josh Ojianwuna dunk, at which point the Bears had made 16-of-25 shots.
While RaeQuan Battle countered with a triple to bring the Mountaineers back to within eight, that’s what West Virginia’s halftime deficit was after Fairmont native and former Mountaineer Jalen Bridges threw down a dunk in the final minute to send the Bears to the break with a 42-34 advantage.
WVU made half of its 20 field-goal attempts to shoot a more than respectable 50 percent in the first half, but the Mountaineers were plagued by an inability to get stops and 10 turnovers.
Baylor, which had four first-half turnovers, had 22 paint points and a 12-7 edge in points off turnovers through 20 minutes.
“We’re bounce passing entry passes on the perimeter, which is certainly not something you want to do,” Eilert said. “It’s not always on the guards. Sometimes it’s timing or we’re cutting to get open or a lack thereof.”
Any thought of a WVU rally to put a scare into the Bears evaporated early into the second half, which Baylor began with consecutive triples from Nunn to take its biggest lead to that point — 48-34.
JaKobe Walter’s trey moments later made it 51-36 and three triples for BU in the opening 2:30 of the second half as the Bears were in complete control.
“From the beginning of the game, we did a great job on the offensive end,” Drew said.
A RayJ Dennis three with 12:33 remaining made it 66-44 for the first 20-plus point margin of the matchup.
Baylor’s lead was still 18 at 79-61 after Walter’s three with 6:21 remaining.
“It wasn’t our best defensive game. They had more wide open threes than they should have,” Battle said. “I messed up on a couple scout things and Ja’Kobe got going on that with his threes.”
The Mountaineers pulled to within 81-67 on Battle’s dunk, though Eilert was whistled for a technical foul seconds later after disagreeing with a foul called on Kriisa, who was also visibly frustrated with several whistles throughout.
“Kerr plays with an incredible amount of emotion and sometimes it can be to his detriment arguing calls,” Eilert said. “I tell him every day to let me handle that. I’m not going to get into the officiating.”
WVU got as close as 89-80 on Battle’s triple with 1:26 left, but that marked the Mountaineers’ final field goal.
“That first half, having eight live-ball turnovers put us in quite the hole and we didn’t start the second half well either,” Eilert said. “We can’t wait to pick up our competitive nature until we’re down double digits.”
Walter led all players with 23 points despite shooting 6 for 17. Nunn added 20 on 11 shots and Dennis scored 18 on eight shots.
Yves Missi added 13 points on 5-for-5 shooting, while Bridges and Ojianwuna scored 10 apiece in the victory.
The Bears had 19 assists against only eight turnovers and scored 22 points off nine offensive rebounds.
“The numbers aren’t terrible at minus-2 in rebounding (27-25), but their nine offensive rebounds let to 22 second-chance points. That’s a critical issue as well as taking care of the ball,” Eilert said.
Battle’s 25 points led the Mountaineers and center Jesse Edwards followed with 21 and a game-high nine rebounds.
Those were WVU’s only double-figure scorers in what marked the team’s fourth straight loss and prolonged a winless February to this point. The Mountaineers are surrendering more than 88 points on average through the four February losses.
“You have to be able to finish the possession and we didn’t do so,” Eilert said. “Defense hasn’t been our strong point by any means from the beginning. It’s a very physical league and we don’t have that big, strong inside presence.”
HUNDRED, W.Va, — Every day, Austin Hayes drives with his mom through the mountains of West Virginia’s northern corridor heading east to school. A once proud Hundred High School Hornet, Hayes is now an incoming junior at North Marion High School in Farmington.
After the consolidation of his high school in Wetzel County, Hayes decided to attend school in another county. His commute is about 20 minutes, but that’s only a fifth of the time some of his former classmates travel to their new school, Valley High.
“There’s a lot of kids that have to sit on the bus, that was the main complaint,” he said. “The bus times.”
In November 2024, the Wetzel County Board of Education voted to consolidate four of the county’s high schools into two. Students at Paden City High School would go to Magnolia High School and those at Hundred High School would go to Valley High School. By 2029, all students would go to one school.
Students in Wetzel County are hardly alone. Across West Virginia, public schools are rapidly closing. Political leaders are cutting taxes and funneling hundreds of millions of taxpayer money into a school voucher program, while wringing their hands about local school financial struggles.
Meanwhile students, parents and community members in Wetzel County want change. They’d like elected officials and bureaucrats to listen more to the people, fix the school funding formula and try to protect other communities from losing their schools.
Before the Wetzel County school board voted to consolidate, board members held public meetings at multiple schools in the county to hear the community’s concerns.
Hayes, then a student at Hundred High School, joined the teachers, staff and other community members who came out. He participated in football, basketball and track.
“A lot of Hundred students that go to Valley now, sit on the bus for at least an hour every day, just going one way, and it’s just unfeasible for a lot of Hundred students to have the same opportunities for after-school sports and stuff,” he said.
A mother of three, Abby Tennant’s youngest child attended Paden City High School before it shut down. “I loved Paden City,” Tennant said. “Everybody knew my daughter, they knew what was going on with her. She needed help. It was freely given.”
Tennant went to multiple board meetings, asking questions and raising concerns about what this would mean for the students. After the consolidation decision, she opted to put her daughter in school in another county.
Wetzel County school board member Jimmy Glasscock was the only member to vote against both consolidations. He said he was disappointed that the board didn’t listen to the voters in the county.
“We’ve lost our students, we’ve lost our communities, we’ve lost our teachers, we’ve lost our service personnel, we just continue losing, and we will continue losing,” he said.
Following the county school board’s vote to consolidate, the West Virginia Board of Education met and voted to approve the consolidation.
“I went to the state board meeting and spoke out against it as well, and honestly, that disappointed me just as much,” Hayes said. He said that neither the county nor the state school boards had adequately addressed concerns the community shared.
Since attending North Marion, Hayes doesn’t participate in as many extracurriculars or sports.
In this year’s legislative session, Sen. Jay Taylor, R-Taylor, sponsored a bill that would have required a county vote before closing schools. Although Taylor is a member of the Senate Education Committee, he said he doesn’t know why the bill didn’t come up for a vote.
“I wanted to protect rural schools,” Taylor said. He believes more money should be going to the students and that part of that change is fixing the funding formula.
Schools around West Virginia are hemorrhaging enrollment. State school board President Paul Hardesty warned in January that financial hardship and closures they were seeing in Hancock County were only the beginning. This month, he said up to 20 schools could close in the coming year.
Since 2019, 70 public schools have closed and over 30,000 students have left the West Virginia public school system. In the last year, Wetzel County Public Schools have lost over 150 students, dipping below 2,000 students in the county.
At the beginning of this year’s legislative session, House legislators heard from consultants they had hired to study the state’s public education system. The consultants told them they needed to rework the state’s school funding formula and cap the Hope Scholarship. Lawmakers made no changes to either.
Wetzel County is the biggest producer of oil and gas in the state, but the drilling boom hasn’t brought the prosperity that advocates predicted, as the school funding formula bases pay for teachers on enrollment. And the county’s enrollment doesn’t support the number of teachers on the payroll.
Del. Bill Bell, a fifth-grade teacher in Wetzel County, said, “The formula itself is outdated and convoluted.”
Bell campaigned during the Republican primary on strengthening public schools and ensuring that teachers and service personnel were compensated competitively. He lost.
Sen. Charles Clements, R-Wetzel, served as the vice chair of the Senate Education Committee. He sponsored a bill this year that would have updated the school aid formula mandating funding for 1,200 students per county even if enrollment falls below that. The education committee never put the bill on the agenda.
“We have a constitutional obligation to provide an education to the students in West Virginia,” Clements said. He is not running for reelection.
Clements’ bill was among several proposed changes to the formula. Other proposals included one by Del. Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, that would have created a block grant for all counties and a supplemental account for special needs students. Ellington introduced the legislation in February, and the clock ran out on the session while lawmakers were still talking about it. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Jessup Higgins, a 2026 graduate of Magnolia High School, is hoping to go to community college for electrical work. He was originally a student at Paden City before it closed.
“It was definitely a nerve-wracking transfer to Magnolia, because I didn’t know anybody there, and I had no idea what it was going to be like, because it’s probably three times the [size] school that I went to,” Higgins said.
He attended the Wetzel County Technical Education Center during his high school career. He said that aside from his family, he doesn’t plan to stay in Wetzel to explore other opportunities.
“[I’d] like to leave my hometown and go, you know, see what the world has to offer,” Higgins said. “And also, there isn’t a whole lot of money around here.”
Lisa Stillion, a retired nurse who taught in both Wetzel and Ohio counties believes the state needs to invest in broadband, infrastructure and technical education programs to keep its students.
“Our state just keeps losing people, and there’s nothing you can do to replace them, because the industry is just not here,” she said.
In November 2025, the Wetzel County school board purchased land in Porters Falls to build a new campus that will include a new career and technical center. Part of pulling their resources together is making sure they have qualified teachers including those for technical education.
“I think these kids need to be better prepared for what’s going to be their career and their way of supporting themselves as they graduate,” Stillion said. “Not every kid’s going to college, and that mindset needs to be looked at.”
Born and raised in Paden City, Rodney McWilliams is a 1984 graduate of Paden City High School. He is a distinguished alumni award winner. McWilliams believes part of keeping people in the communities is making sure their schools stay open and investing in their students.
He said there aren’t many business or work opportunities in Paden City that would make people stay in the community otherwise. McWilliams is the president of the Paden City Foundation, a philanthropic organization that gives scholarships to Paden City High School alumni and supports various civic projects around the city.
He opposed the decision to consolidate the schools because he said the school was the main hub of the town.
“My interest is basically sentimental for myself and for people that hold the school near and dear, historical reasons,” he said. “And, also, to keep the town on the map.”
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) — West Virginians who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits can once again use them to purchase soda after a federal judge blocked the state’s restriction, though the ruling could still face an appeal.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture exceeded its authority and failed to follow required public notice procedures before approving waivers allowing five states, including West Virginia, to restrict certain SNAP purchases. The ruling vacates those waivers, effectively restoring previous purchasing rules unless a higher court intervenes.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey said the state is consulting with the U.S. Department of Justice and the other states involved in the lawsuit before deciding whether to appeal the decision.
“We do think it’s lawful,” Morrisey said. “We think that the way that SNAP was designed, it’s trying to focus on nutrition, and I think our decisions are consistent with that. We want nutritious foods for people.”
Morrisey said discussions are ongoing about the state’s legal strategy.
“We’re conferring with the other states. We’re conferring with the Department of Justice on that, and we’re going to be developing our litigation plan,” he said.
The lawsuit was filed by the National Center for Law and Economic Justice on behalf of plaintiffs challenging the USDA’s approval of the restrictions.
Katherine Deabler-Meadows, an attorney with NCLEJ, said the ruling provides immediate relief for SNAP recipients and retailers.
“For our clients it means a lot that they’re going to be able to buy the food products that they need to buy to manage their lives and their health conditions,” she said.
Deabler-Meadows said the restrictions created confusion for grocery stores and made it more difficult for recipients to use their benefits.
“Legally, this is very clear,” she said. “The district court vacated the five waivers. USDA’s approval of those restrictions has been vacated. Legally, people should be able to just walk in and use their SNAP benefits the exact same way they could before the restrictions went into effect.”
Supporters of the restrictions argued they would encourage healthier food choices. However, Deabler-Meadows said the limits placed an unnecessary burden on families relying on SNAP benefits.
“It might seem like a small thing to not be able to drink a soda,” she said. “If your day is that long and you have that many things to juggle, sometimes that is something that you need in order to meet all of those responsibilities.”
Although the restriction has been struck down, it may take time for retailers across West Virginia to update their systems. The federal government may also appeal the ruling, but unless a court issues a stay, attorneys say the restrictions are no longer legally in effect.
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