WVU Basketball: Lehigh Preview

WVU Basketball: A Look Ahead to LehighIf you didn’t classify West Virginia’s first win of the season as “pretty,” you certainly wouldn’t call their second game a pretty win either. West Virginia won a close contest against Campbell on Thursday night by a final score of 73-65. Notable performances include the 23-point game from Honor Huff and a defensive masterclass from Brenen Lorient, who had 5 blocks to go along with 12 points, 9 rebounds, and 4 assists. While it likely wasn’t the overall team performance that they were desiring, Ross Hodge and his team will now shift their focus to a matchup with Lehigh on Sunday afternoon. Lehigh Mountain HawksThe Lehigh Mountain Hawks were picked to finish 8th out of 10 teams in the Patriot League preseason poll. Like West Virginia, Lehigh will enter the matchup with two games under their belt in the early season. The Mountain Hawks faced about as tough a test as you could in game 1 when they visited the 2nd-ranked Houston Cougars. Houston won the game by a final score of 75-57. The Cougars were led by the sharpshooting Emmanuel Sharpe’s 24 points. Despite a 21-point deficit at halftime, Lehigh outscored Houston 34-31 after the break while they cut the margin to as little as 15 points in the second half. The Mountain Hawks followed this game up with a “get right” game when they hosted Valley Forge, blowing them out 91-52. 4 players scored in double figures for Lehigh, and they were led by a 23-point performance off the bench by freshman guard Andrew Urosevic, who knocked down 5-of-10 from 3-point territory in 22 minutes played. Urosevic did not play against Houston, but we can expect to see him on the court at the Hope Coliseum on Sunday afternoon.Players to KnowNasir Whitlock is in a new role during his junior season with Lehigh. In the previous 2 seasons with the Mountain Hawks, Whitlock came off the bench, but now he’s in the starting lineup and had an 18-point, 9-rebound game against Houston. The 6’2 junior guard was the team’s third-leading scorer in 2024-25, averaging 10.5 points per game. Hank Alvey is a 6’9 sophomore in his second season at Lehigh. He scored 10 points and grabbed 8 rebounds against the Cougars. He started in 28 games as a freshman and averaged 7 points and 5 rebounds per game. Like Whitlock, Joshua Ingram is in his third season with Lehigh. He was a 36.2% three-point shooter last season while averaging 7.2 points per game. Overall, Lehigh returns a lot of players from a team that finished 11-19 a season ago. While they lost 3 of their top 4 scorers, there was very little roster turnover aside from that for Brett Reed’s squad. In what is a rarity in college basketball nowadays, nearly the entire Lehigh roster is made up of returning players or freshmen. The Mountain Hawks added Jalen Vazquez, who led all players at the JUCO level in assists last season with 379 for an average of 6.4 per game.West Virginia vs Lehigh The Mountaineers and Mountain Hawks are set to square off on Sunday afternoon from the Hope Coliseum in a 3pm ET tip-off on ESPN+.