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Rough 48 hours for WVU

By Bill Hughes for The 4 min read
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The West Virginia menĢƵ basketball team woke up Saturday morning ranked second in the country.

What a difference two days makes.

The Mountaineers dropped a 72-71 Big 12 game at Texas Tech Saturday and dropped a 71-66 home game to 10th-ranked Kansas Monday.

WVU has six more games against ranked opponents on the regular-season schedule, and that doesn’t include the Big 12 tournament.

It will be interesting to see how the Mountaineers rebound against Texas Saturday before heading to 24th-ranked TCU Monday.

The team is playing stifling defense, which earns them the moniker “Press Virginia,” but it will have to right the ship if it wants to earn a top seed in the March Madness tournament and possibly play the opening weekend in Pittsburgh.

Pitt and Duke thoughts

The outcome of DukeĢƵ win at Pitt last Wednesday was never in question, and I left with several thoughts.

The Petersen Events Center was nowhere near full capacity, and that is odd when Duke plays on the road.

Yes, Pitt started five freshmen, none of which were ranked above three stars by recruiting services, and they were outclassed by Duke.

Yes, DukeĢƵ entire starting five will be in the NBA next season, but four of the starters were also freshmen.

What does second-year head coach Kevin Stallings have to do to get things turned around?

When he was hired, Stallings was not a popular choice and the majority of his underclassmen players from a year ago transferred out.

So everyone knew that there would be tough times this season.

But for the gym to be that empty, and of the fans there, a good 40 percent were Duke fans.

I have seen “The Pete” packed and rocking, but to even see “The Zoo” student section not full is not a good sign.

Could a lot of the empty seats be because of fans turning away from Stallings, or is it more about not wanting to watch the team get destroyed at home?

ZimcoskyĢƵ homecoming snowed out

Emily Zimcosky, a sophomore on the Ohio University swim team and a graduate of Geibel Catholic, did not get to have her homecoming Saturday at Duquesne University.

Ohio University and Xavier were to travel to Duquesne for a meet but it ended up being snowed out.

“I was pretty bummed out about not getting to race this past weekend and with conference (meets) fast approaching, racing is crucial to the process,” said Zimcosky in a disappointed tone. “Unfortunately, we will not be making up the meet since its not a conference meet.”

Zimcosky talked about not getting to swim in front of so many supporters.

“While I would have loved getting to see my parents, family and friends and would have loved to be back in the ‘Burgh, I am grateful for the coaching staffs for prioritizing the safety of the teams and the people coming to cheer by cancelling the meet,” she said. “The weather was quite unpredictable, so as they say, better safe than sorry!”

Even though the meet was cancelled, Zimcosky said that the team got some good work in on campus.

“We did some race pace sets today at practice to get the experience that we missed at Duquesne,” she said. “The team did really well with the workout, which sets us up nicely for our conference meet against Akron this weekend.”

CharleroiĢƵ Riley set to sign with PSU Fayette today

CharleroiĢƵ Kaitlyn Riley is supposed to sign with Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus’ womenĢƵ basketball team today.

The senior at Charleroi recently scored her 1,000th point and head coach Scott Hillen is excited to get her in the fold.

“Kaitlyn is a great person and will be a great addition to our roster,” Hillen said. “We have been recruiting her for a while and she has the chance to come in and play right away next season.”

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Email questions/comments to Bill at powerhousehughes@gmail.com or tweet them to me @BillHughes_III

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