WVU Basketball Meets Utah for 1st Time in Nearly 30 Years

WVU basketball might be without its best defender as Utah comes to town for its first game against West Virginia since 1998.

Sophomore guard Sencire Harris went down at the end of Wednesday’s loss at TCU and his status for Saturday is in question.

“He wasn’t able to finish and we aren’t sure yet what his availability will be for the game,” WVU coach Darian DeVries said Friday.

WVU would certainly like to have Harris’s on-ball defense as the Mountaineers (14-8, 5-6 Big 12) attempt to break out of their recent funk. West Virginia has lost four of its last five games with three of the losses coming against teams with losing conference records.

“This is a really good league top to bottom, anybody can beat anybody,” DeVries said. “For us, it’s been a narrow focus on we’ve got to play good for the 40 minutes that’s right in front of us. When we’ve done that, we’ve been pretty successful.”

West Virginia faces another such team in Utah (13-9, 5-6), which won its last game against Colorado but has dropped three of five.

“We’ve got a huge game against Utah and we’ve got to play well,” DeVries said. “If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’re going to get beat.”

The Utes, are a perfect 6-0 all-time against WVU, although this will be the first meeting of the current millennium. The teams last met in 1998, a 65-62 Utah victory, and before that hadn’t played since 1976.

This season, Utah is defined by its size, boasting one of the tallest starting fives in the country, headlined by 7-foot-1 center Lawson Lovering. Guard Gabe Madsen leads the Utes in scoring averaging 15 points per game while 6-foot-8 Ezra Ausar is next at 11.3. 6-foot-9 Keanu Dawes leads in rebounding despite coming off the bench, averaging 5.2 boards per game.

“They’re huge,” DeVries said. “Their starting five is really big, really tall.”

Utah coach Craig Smith puts his team’s size to use by playing a myriad of defenses, including things you rarely see like the box-and-1 or triangle-and-2.

“For them, it’s keeping you off balance,” DeVries said. “It’s a lot to prepare for, that’s the hardest part.”

While Utah’s defense is versatile, it hasn’t always been good this season. The Utes allow 70.1 points per game while being middle of the pack in field goal percentage, blocks and steals.

Utah’s biggest struggle this season has come at the free throw line, where the Utes are dead-last in the Big 12 shooting just 62.3%. If recent trends hold up, however, that might not benefit the Mountaineers to much. In their last to games, the Mountaineers have watched the second- and third-worst free throw teams in the league, Cincinnati and TCU, shoot a combined 31-35 from the line.

“I’m waiting for those stats to actually be real,” DeVries joked. “I look at them and think somebody’s lying.”

WVU basketball and Utah tip off at 5 p.m. inside the Coliseum. The game will be broadcast on EPSN+.

For a related story, Josh Eilert returns to Morgantown as WVU basketball hosts Utah.