— Story by Daniel Woods
A nine-point halftime deficit turned into a game that quickly got out of hand in the second half Saturday as West Virginia dropped its regular season finale, 92-56 at Cincinnati
Five straight points from RaeQuan Battle and a buzzer-beating layup from Kobe Johnson saw the Mountaineers cut a 14-point Bearcat lead in half going the halftime locker room, before Cincinnati celebrated Senior Day with a dominant second half in which West Virginia was outscored, 56-29.
“I don’t know what stat they didn’t dominate us in,” West Virginia interim head coach Josh Eilert said. “It seemed like they certainly wanted it way more than we did.”
With the Bearcats holding a 9-2 advantage out of the gate, Eilert burned an early timeout that seemed to spark his team. The Mountaineers responded with a 10-2 run and took the lead on a Noah Farrakhan three-pointer.
A back-and-forth middle portion of the opening half saw the teams in a 19-all tie 8 minutes before the halftime break, but Cincinnati seized upon the emotions of the game to regain control. With the Bearcats ahead by four at the 6:09 mark of the first half, Eilert was called for a technical foul and Simas Lukosius converted both free throws to extend the lead.
Less than 30 seconds later, West Virginia guard Kerr Kriisa caught the ire of official Doug Sirmons and earned a technical foul of his own. Lukosius made 1 of 2 at the line and Jizzle James scored shortly after to make the advantage nine.
Quinn Slazinski answered with a triple for the Mountaineers, but Cincinnati (18-13, 7-11) center Aziz Bandaogo brought Fifth Third Arena to its feet with slam dunks on back to back possessions for the first double-digit lead of the game.
That margin reached its first half-high at 36-22 behind a 17-3 Bearcat run before Battle and Johnson combined for the 7-0 spurt going into the break.
The opening of the second half reflected the game’s beginning with Eilert calling timeout after an 8-4 Cincinnati start brought the Mountaineers’ deficit to 11.
This time, his team did not have an answer and the Bearcats maintained a high level of energy to advance the lead to 15 at the 14:30 mark.
With West Virginia (9-22, 4-14) largely held at bay offensively, all of the momentum in the building continued to flow in the direction of the home team.
Eilert electing to try to stem the tide with another timeout after a Dan Skillings, Jr. dunk that gave the Bearcats a 60-42 lead.
“Every run I tried to run out of timeouts trying to stop the bleeding but couldn’t get the bleeding stopped,” Eilert said.
After Eilert stopped the clock with 10:05 left to play, rather than allow West Virginia to regain its composure in the final stretch, Cincinnati tightened the screws with a James jumper pushing the gap to more than 20 a matter of minutes later.
That number jumped past 30 with 2:15 to play on a Day Day Thomas three-pointer and walk-ons Landen Long and Chase Kirkwood put their names into the scorebook with a three and a pair of free throws respectively to cap off the 36-point Bearcat win.
“Typically defense travels and that’s been our biggest issue,” Eilert said, “It was certainly an issue tonight. Like a hot knife going through butter in a lot of these one-on-one matchups.”
Skillings, Jr. came off the bench to lead all scorers with 17 points. He was one of four Cincinnati players to reach double figures including John Newman III with 14, Jamille Reynolds with 13 and Lukosius with 12.
Farrakhan led West Virginia with 12 points off the bench.
The Mountaineers finish the regular season with a record of 9-22, setting a new mark for the most losses in a season in program history. They have lost five straight and nine of 10.
West Virginia is locked into last place and will be the No. 14 seed in this week’s Big 12 Men’s Basketball Championship. The Mountaineers will play at 3 p.m. (ET) Tuesday.