As WVU looks to solve late-game woes, rebounding comes into focus ahead of

Working in a mixture of new players and going long stretches of non-conference play with several of them unavailable for long stretches, West Virginia’s men’s basketball team stumbled to a 5-8 record in non-conference play.

The Mountaineers are nearly a full week removed from a 78-75 overtime loss to Ohio State in Cleveland, and the challenge becomes far greater than at any point in non-conference play Saturday when West Virginia takes on Houston at 2 p.m. inside the Fertitta Center. The Big 12 opener for both teams in what marks the Cougars’ inaugural contest in the league can be see on Big 12 Now on ESPN+.

West Virginia suffered its sixth single-digit setback against the Buckeyes and hopes to find itself in position to fix issues in close calls down the stretch against one of three remaining unbeaten in college basketball.

“A lot of it is closing out possessions,” WVU interim head coach Josh Eilert said. “There’s so many things that we can control down the stretch. Discipline things in the final minutes that can be the difference in the game — whether it be rebounding, foul line and getting a good shot when you really need one instead of a forced shot on the fly or coming out of a timeout. 

“It’s a game of inches in so many ways. What you can control, you need to control. We like to analyze a lot of these things, especially in the last 3 or 4 minutes of each game, and really try to educate as to what we can control and fix those things, so when it comes to a possession by possession battle down the stretch, we come out on top.”

Hanging in with Houston (13-0) will be quite a challenge for the Mountaineers, who have yet to win away from home this season.

Among the toughest tests for WVU against the Cougars will be rebounding. The Mountaineers enter the matchup with the worst rebounding margin of any Big 12 team at +0.3 per game — while the Cougars are fourth at +8.9.

Without center Jesse Edwards, who will be sidelined at least another couple weeks due to a fractured wrist, rebounding becomes more difficult for West Virginia against a team that has consistently prided itself on the glass in addition to its physicality and toughness under head coach Kelvin Sampson.

Eilert says improvement on the boards starts with getting more from a starting unit of guards Kerr Kriisa, Noah Farrakhan and RaeQuan Battle and forwards Quinn Slazinski and Akok Akok.

“They do a lot of other good things for you offensively, but they don’t necessarily rebound the ball as well as they should,” said Eilert, who also noted the uniqueness of his team rebounding at a better rate when utilizing zone defense as opposed to man-to-man. “That’s probably the unit on the floor the most throughout the course of the game. I had the conversation with those guys [Wednesday] that we need more production, especially from the rebounding side of things.”

Battle has played in three games for the Mountaineers, while Kriisa and Farrakhan have…