Rifle: Kentucky Hosting WVU and Rose-Hulman
February 04, 2005 01:27 PM | General
February 4, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia University rifle team travels to Lexington, Ky., on Saturday, Feb. 5, for a triangular match with host Kentucky and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. The match marks the Mountaineers’ first action since defeating Ohio State, 4537-4499, on Jan. 23 in Morgantown.
West Virginia (2-5, 0-3) seeks its first win over a Great America Rifle Conference opponent this season over Kentucky (6-4, 3-1), while the non-conference encounter with Rose-Hulman (6-5) is the teams’ first meeting since 1981.
Freshman Lafe Kunkel leads the Mountaineers with a team-best 575 smallbore average and a 581.5 air rifle sum for five 60-shot smallbore matches and six 60-shot air rifle matches WVU has fired this season.
Kentucky is coming off a first-place finish in the Withrow Invitational on Jan. 30. The Wildcats won the 10-team event held at Murray State with a 4618 aggregate score. Rose-Hulman last competed on Jan. 29, defeating the Nebraska club team, 4373-3882, and Purdue, 4185-3937.
West Virginia is 13-1 all-time versus Kentucky since their first meeting in 1963. The last match between the two teams was a close 6165-6157 win for the Mountaineers in Lexington, Ky., in the 2002-03 season opener. WVU has won its last six over Kentucky and the last loss came in 1997 when the Wildcats handed the Mountaineers their only loss of the season, 6178-6179, in another closely contested match.
