West Virginia Basketball Loses to Radford on Last-Second Shot
RaeQuan Battle‘s West Virginia Mountaineers debut did not go as planned on Wednesday night as WVU lost to Radford 66-65.
The Mountaineers lost on a last-second shot by DaQuan Smith to drop their second-straight game and their fourth in five games. WVU was leading in the final seconds 65-64 when Battle was fouled and went to the free throw line with nine seconds to play. However, Battle missed the free throw which led to Smith’s go-ahead game-winning mid-range jump shot with one second left.
It was a back-and-forth game as Radford had its largest lead of six points early in the second half, but by the six-minute mark, it was WVU leading 57-52, which was its largest lead of the night. But Radford outscored West Virginia 13-7 in the final few minutes to pick up the victory.
Smith finished with a team-high 18 points for the Highlanders, while Battle led the way in his first game with WVU, scoring 29 points on 9/22 shooting, including 10/13 from the free throw line. Battle struggled from deep, going just 1/8 from three-point range.
Forward Akok Akok started the matchup in place of the injured center Jesse Edwards, who will miss four weeks with an injury, and scored four points with seven rebounds. Noah Farrakhan, who also became recently eligible, finished with 16 points and seven rebounds.
The loss drops West Virginia to 4-7 on the season. WVU has two games remaining before conference play gets going. West Virginia takes on Toledo on Saturday and then Ohio State next Saturday before Big 12 play begins on January 6th at No. 3 Houston.
