West Virginia
What to watch for when Arizona men’s basketball visits West Virginia
Halfway through its first Big 12 road swing, Arizona has already experienced how different such trips are compared to those in the Pac-12. For starters, there’s a lot more sitting around and waiting.
When the Wildcats play No. 21 West Virginia on Tuesday night it will have been away from home for six days, having left Tucson on Thursday afternoon. They spent three nights in Cincinnati, including Saturday after upsetting the then-No. 16 Bearcats, before flying to Morgantown on Sunday afternoon and spending two nights there ahead of the tail end of their debut Big 12 road swing.
This is one of three 2-game trips for Arizona (8-5, 2-0 Big 12) in its new conference, by far the lengthiest, and one of only two that will keep it out on the road in between games. The Wildcats are also scheduled to stay away from home in between games at Texas Tech on Jan. 18 and Oklahoma State on Jan. 21, while they’ll bus back to Tucson following a Feb. 1 game at ASU before flying to Provo to face BYU on Feb. 4.
All of this is a stark contrast from life on the road in the Pac-12, where other than the games against ASU the road trips were always double dips but against teams fairly close to each other. The days of having “travel partners” are over, as ASU was home on Saturday and visits Kansas on Wednesday.
Same goes for the common two-in-three-days format of the Pac-12, as the only times in Big 12 play Arizona will have just a day between games will be a pair of Saturday/Monday scenarios where three of the four contests will be at McKale Center.
Asked last week about having the longest of the road trips first, UA coach Tommy Lloyd said “I’ll let you know after.” It’s looking like it will be the most difficult of those three road swings, too, as both teams will have been ranked when the Wildcats face them.
Lloyd picked up his 15th win (in 24 tries) against a ranked opponent at Cincinnati, now comes another chance. Here’s what to watch for when the Wildcats face the Mountaineers on Tuesday, a 5 p.m. MT tip that will stream on ESPN+:
A fairly familiar foe
Arizona is one of four former Pac-12 schools that joined the Big 12 this year, but it won’t face ASU, Colorado or Utah until later this month. Yet it has already played West Virginia, the teams meeting in the 4th place game at the Battle4Atlantis on Nov. 29 with the Mountaineers pulling out an 83-76 win in overtime.
That was the first of seven consecutive wins for West Virginia, which jumped into the AP Top 25 this week for the first time in more than two years. For Arizona, that loss dropped it to 3-4 to mark the first time it was below .500 since 2010.
Quite a bit has changed for both teams since then. Arizona has won five of six and actually got votes in the latest AP poll, and while the Mountaineers have continued to win they’ve had to do so without senior Tucker DeVries. The son of first-year coach Darian DeVries has been out with an “upper body injury” since early December.
Assuming DeVries doesn’t play Tuesday that means the UA won’t have to contend with a 6-foot-8 wing who was shooting 47.3 percent from 3-point range and torched the Wildcats for eight 3s on 12 attempts and had 26 points.
West Virginia still has senior guard Javon Small, who had 14 points and eight assists against Arizona and leads the Big 12 in scoring (19.5 points per game) and minutes (35.7). He was named Big 12 Player of the Year on Monday after averaging 18.5 points, 11 rebounds and 5 assists in wins over Kansas (in Lawrence) and Oklahoma State.
Yet another defensive juggernaut
In Lloyd’s first three seasons at Arizona his teams faced opponents that ranked in the Top 25 of KenPom.com’s adjusted deficiency metric 15 times, no more than six in a season, and only three in 2023-24. West Virginia will be the sixth Top 25 defensive team faced already in 2024-25, third in a row, as TCU is 25th and Cincinnati 7th in that metric.
The Mountaineers are 15th in adjusted defense, sitting fourth in effective field goal percentage (42.1). From a raw numbers standpoint they’re 7th in field goal defense (37.1 percent), 9th in defending the 2 (42.7 percent) and 9th against the 3 (27.4 percent).
The UA shot 45.3 percent against West Virginia last time, second-best of any opponent against the Mountaineers this season, and had a 104.4 offensive efficiency compared to the 93.9 West Virginia has allowed in 2024-25. And that was when the Wildcats were still figuring out their offensive identity.
During its 4-game win streak, Arizona is shooting 53.5 percent and its efficiencies against TCU (137.9) and Cincinnati (103.8) were the worst and second-worst, respectively, allowed by those teams this season.
A chance to make an early mark
Arizona is one of four 2-0 teams in the Big 12, along with Houston, Iowa State and West Virginia. The Cougars and Cyclones are heavily favored in their next games, both at home, and while KenPom.com projects a 72-71 Mountaineers win it’s the UA that’s favored by 2.5 according to FanDuel Sportsbook.
The Wildcats and Texas Tech, which plays at BYU on Tuesday night after winning at Utah on Saturday, both have a chance to start out 2-0 on the road in Big 12 play and do so with 2-game road sweeps. Those aren’t very common in this conference.
Last season there were 36 instances of back-to-back road games, with only three sweeps. Fourteen resulted in splits and 18 had the road team going 0-2. All told, in 2023-24 Big 12 games were won by the home team 66.7 percent of the time, third-highest of any Division I conference, and only Houston had a winning road record.
Compare that to the Pac-12, where in its final season six of 48 trips were swept by the road team with 23 splits and 19 winless journeys. Arizona swept the ultra-tough Rocky Mountain trip to Utah and Colorado and split the other three, going 6-4 on the road.
West Virginia
Community Catalyst Grant applications are open through West Virginia First Foundation through June 30 – WV MetroNews
The West Virginia First Foundation, which was established to use drug lawsuit settlement money to try to alleviate problems related to addiction, reported having access to $378.5 million in financial resources and noted that more than $34 million in grants have been awarded since the organization’s start.
The West Virginia First Foundation met for a few minutes Thursday at Ascend West Virginia in Charleston. The meeting was also available for view through streaming.
Executive Director Jonathan Board highlighted the launch of the Community Catalyst Grant application and a statewide needs assessment intended to identify service gaps.
Designed as a three-year, outcomes-driven investment, the program will support projects focused on public safety response, day report centers and generational prevention efforts. The program opened for applications on June 1 and remains open through June 30.
“We’re very encouraged by the interest and engagement so far,” Board said.
The board also approved a $4 million funding request for the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. The project is focused on expanding access to innovative addiction treatment and recovery support tools while building the technology and infrastructure needed to support implementation across West Virginia.
Additional details about the project and funding agreement are to be released in the coming weeks following the completion of final documentation. West Virginia First Foundation and Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute plan to issue a joint announcement once the agreement process is complete.
“They’ve gone through a very rigorous process for the correct funding,” Board said. “Their team has presented an opportunity to fund a project that will build technology, training and support systems of care needed to expand access to an innovative addiction treatment approach throughout the state of West Virginia, and really beyond.”
The West Virginia First Foundation is a non-profit organization established in 2023 to manage and distribute 72.5% of the state’s opioid settlement funds, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. The organization is aimed at combatting the addiction crisis through grants and regional projects.
The next regular meeting of the Foundation’s Board of Directors is scheduled for Sept. 17 although it’s subject to change.
West Virginia may have come up empty-handed in two tries against North Carolina in the College World Series, but they earned the respect of their head coach, Scott Forbes, who was incredibly complimentary of the Mountaineers following Wednesday’s game.
“I want to congratulate West Virginia. A heck of a team, a heck of a run,” he opened his postgame press conference with. “They are very well coached. They just play the game the right way. It’s a credit to their coaching staff. They come at you a lot of ways. A lot of speed, deep pitching staff, so we really had to work in those two games to beat them. I’ve been in their shoes, and I know what that feels like, and it’s a stinker. But man, they got a lot to be proud of, and they should be extremely proud of how they represented their university.”
The culture at WVU is as strong as it gets
Multiple times this season, West Virginia looked like they were well on their way to a loss and were rewarded with a win because they never stopped playing hard. Everyone thinks of the two games against Kentucky in the Morgantown Regional, and rightfully so, but they also came back to win after trailing by eight against UCF and after trailing by five to BYU.
For a moment, there was a belief that the magical moment was going to come again during Wednesday’s game against Forbes’ Tar Heels. With two outs in the 7th and trailing 12-1, Armani Guzman busted his tail down the first base line to beat out a grounder to short. It ultimately led to a five-run inning for the Mountaineers, all of a sudden turning a laugher into a semi-interesting game. Gavin Kelly hit a solo home run in the 8th to make it a five-run deficit, and in the ninth, Ben Lumsden just missed a three-run shot that would have really put pressure on North Carolina, even with two outs.
To have your team still playing hard when trailing by 11 with their season likely about to come to an end, it says a lot about the character of this group, but also how deeply ingrained the culture is at WVU. There’s a reason this program has turned the corner over the last 14 or so years and is continuing to trend up. They’ve had the right people in place leading it.
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West Virginia
Proposed 107.5-mile transmission line could leave W.Va. ratepayers on hook for $440M-$900M
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) — A 107.5-mile transmission line project has been proposed, the MidAtlantic Resiliency Link, which would cut through parts of West Virginia to ultimately help power Virginia’s data center hub since there is not enough generation locally to serve them.
“Virginia gets the power and West Virginia gets the towers,” Del Chris Anders said. “What they did is they look west and said, hey, we’ll just use West Virginia but we’ll get this power and we’ll run this big extension cord. I’m all for exporting power from West Virginia. We are a power production state, but I’m not going to do so out of the wallets of West Virginians and allowing their property to be taken.”
During the 2026 legislative session, lawmakers put a bill on the table which was aimed at giving the state access to utilize these lines, but nothing made it to the finish line.
“We said, ‘Okay, if you’re going to run them through, you have to drop substations in West Virginia and by the way, West Virginia ratepayers will only pay for the amount of energy that stays within our state,’” Anders said.
A second line is also up for discussion. Valley Link Transmission hasn’t finalized any routes yet, but it would consist of 260 miles of transmission line and would add two substations between Frederick County, Maryland, and Putnam County.
With both of these lines, the main concern surrounding the proposals is who exactly is expected to foot the bill and whether or not it will ultimately fall back on West Virginia ratepayers.
“We’re going to be on the hook for anywhere between $440 million to over $900 million on both lines,” Anders said.
Lawmakers said those price tags continue to increase.
“At least for the MARL line, they went back to the grid operator, PJM, and said, ‘It’s going to cost significantly more money than it originally thought. Those estimates of the cost to West Virginia ratepayers are only going to go up,’” Del. Evan Hansen said.
These projects have gained bipartisan opposition. This is all beginning when representatives for these energy companies brought these proposals to lawmakers in January, noting that these lines would strengthen the entire grid.
But many lawmakers were not convinced, asking why they should support it if West Virginia has no direct benefit.
“It would increase our electric rates and private property owners might be faced with giving up their land or having their property values decline,” Hansen said.
It’s not only state officials voicing opposition. Public hearings have been held in the northern counties where community members shared their concerns with these projects that could go right through their backyards.
“We did hear from construction workers and electrical workers about the jobs, but otherwise it was uniformly against the construction of the project,” Hansen said.
An evidentiary hearing for MARL’s permit application will be held by the Public Service Commission on Oct. 26.
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