West Virginia pulls off stunning upset of No. 3 Kansas in Morgantown

Fans stormed the court as another top 10 team went down this weekend. West Virginia pulled off an 91-85 upset of No. 3 Kansas on Saturday in Morgantown in a game that came down to the end.

The Mountaineers led by as many as seven points with six minutes remaining before the Jayhawks managed to come back and make things interesting down the wire. KU retook the lead 81-80 with 2:41 to go, but WVU would have an answer. The Mountaineers strung together four straight points to take the lead for good, though Kansas wouldn’t go away quietly.

Kevin McCullar appeared to hit a 3-pointer with 11 seconds remaining to cut the lead to 87-86. However, upon further review it was changed to a two-pointer as West Virginia’s Noah Farrakhan was fouled with nine seconds remaining.

Kansas coach Bill Self showed his frustration at the call, as he argued that a 10-second violation occurred prior to the foul as the Mountaineers still hadn’t got the ball past half court. Nonetheless, Farrakhan made both free throws to seal the win.

Raequan Battle led the Mountaineers with 23 points to go along with nine rebounds in the win. Patrick Suemnick also did his part to add a career-high 20 points and six boards.

Both teams got off to a hot start on Saturday, with West Virginia making nine of its first 11 3-point attempts. That led to a high-scoring first half as the score was knotted at 51 heading into halftime. Things remained neck-and-neck for the majority of the second half before the Mountaineers took their largest lead of the game, 77-70, with 6:49 to go.

Free throw shooting was huge down the stretch, as West Virginia made nine of 10 attempts from the stripe over the final 34 seconds to secure the win. The Mountaineers were efficient from the line all evening to make 21-of-25 (84%) of their free throws for the entire game.

The victory snapped a six-game losing streak for West Virginia against Kansas and also improved it’s record to 7-5 against the Jayhawks when in Morgantown. It is the second loss for KU in the past four games after the Jayhawks lost to UCF last week.

It is the second top 25 win for the Mountaineers in their past three games as they improved to 7-11 (2-3 Big 12) on the season. West Virginia will hope that momentum carries over into its next matchup against UCF on Tuesday.