Kriisa, Farrakhan make first appearances; Moutaineers still lose

Kriisa
- Edwards
- Farrakhan
- Battle
- Slazinski
Farrakhan played in his first game of the season last Saturday when the Mountaineers lost to Massachusetts in the Hall of Fame game in Springfield. He scored 15 points in 18 minutes before fouling out.
Kerr Kriisa, a point guard, was also playing for the first time after sitting out the team’s first nine games because of an NCAA ruling. Kriisa played 36 minutes, scored 20 points and had seven assists, but West Virginia fell to 4-6 while Massachusetts improved to 7-2.
Another player, RaeQuan Battle, was made eligible for the rest of the season and could have played against the Minutemen, but had flu-like symptoms and was kept out of the game.
Kriisa, Farrakhan and Battle join with 6-foot-11 Jesse Edwards (14.8 points and 8.7 rebounds a game) and Quinn Slazinski (17.9 points a game) to play in the four non-conference games before the Big 12 schedule begins. Slazinski played 32 minutes and scored 20 points in the loss to Massachusetts.

Edwards
WVU faced Radford this past Wednesday at the Coliseum and then has games against Toledo and Ohio State before the Big 12 part of the schedule begins at Houston on Jan. 6.
After 10 games with lineups that had several players now being replaced by Kriisa, Farrakhan and Battle, the Mountaineers are still going to need game-time minutes to establish any rhythm and show lineups getting familiar with each other.
Akok Akok (6-feet-10) won’t score much and shows his inexperience, while 6-foot-7 Josiah Harris and 6-foot-6 Ofri Naveh won’t score much either as Kriisa, Slazinski and Farrakhan will get the majority of the team’s shot attempts.
Will the newest players mesh with the others to form any kind of useful team defense? Or will the Mountaineers now be in a constant adjustment stage and continue to give up too many points to their on-coming conference opponents?
Playing in the Big 12 is not a place where experimenting and learning will be eased because of the quality of the conference’s teams.

Farrakhan
This team won’t be winning with its defense. If it does become a group of team-oriented players and sees the value of unselfishness and rebounding it could force its way into the win column. If it becomes a team driven by individual goals for statistics, there might not be any meshing of on-court players doing enough to find conference success.

Battle

Slazinski