MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The Drexel Dragons, coached by Morgantown native Zach Spiker, will invade the WVU Coliseum on Saturday afternoon.
It's Drexel's first appearance in Morgantown since 1980, and it's the first time Spiker has coached against the Mountaineers. Drexel coach and Morgantown native Zach Spiker (Tommy Gilligan photo).
The Spiker name is synonymous with West Virginia University athletics because of his father John's longtime association with Mountaineer football as its athletic trainer. The elder Spiker retired from WVU after 40 years of service in 2015 and was inducted into the WVU Sports Hall of Fame in 2017.
Zach's wife, the former Jennifer DePrez, was once an assistant coach on Nikki Izzo-Brown's Mountaineer women's soccer staff.
Spiker's career has taken him from Ithaca College as a player to assistant coaching tenures at Winthrop, West Virginia (under John Beilein) and Cornell before he landed his first head coaching job at Army in 2009.
He coached seven seasons at Army, his last in 2016 featuring a CIT berth after winning 19 games before moving on to Drexel, where he's been for the last eight seasons. Spiker led the Dragons to an NCAA Tournament appearance during the COVID-shortened year in 2021 and had 17 wins last year, the most by a Drexel team since 2012.
He has four starters returning from last year's squad and boasts an impressive Big 5 victory over Villanova last Saturday. The Dragons are currently 5-4 after last Tuesday night's 11-point loss to undefeated Princeton.
Sophomore guard Justin Moore led Drexel with 19 points while sophomore wing Kobe MaGee came off the bench to contribute 18 points against the Tigers.
Senior Amari Williams, a 6-foot-10, 265-pound senior forward, is averaging a team-best 11.7 points and 7.3 rebounds per game.
Drexel shows victories over Winthrop, Fairfield, Queens, Lafayette and Villanova and losses to LaSalle, Temple, Old Dominion and Princeton heading into Saturday afternoon's matchup.
West Virginia, meanwhile, is looking to get back on the right side of the ledger after suffering back-to-back home losses to former Big East rivals St. John's and Pitt.
In both games, the undermanned Mountaineers saw leads evaporate in the second half. The Red Storm used full-court pressure and frequent substitutions to wear down West Virginia in a 79-73 Mountaineer defeat, while Pitt used impressive 3-point shooting to secure its 80-63 victory.
In all, Pitt made a Coliseum-record-tying 16 triples, nine of them coming from forward Blake Hinson.
West Virginia forward Quinn Slazinski produced a season-high 22 points against the Panthers and has scored double figures in all eight games so far this year. In his last four games, Slazinski has scored 17, 16, 19 and 22 points and is averaging a team-best 17.4 points per game.
Senior center Jesse Edwards just missed another double-double with 20 points and nine rebounds against Pitt and shows season averages of 16.3 points and 9.9 rebounds per game.
After that, consistent production has been lacking.
Freshman Ofri Naveh scored a season-high 11 points in the Pitt loss and has tallied 30 points in his last three games.
Junior guard Kobe Johnson had a season-high 19 points in a win against Jacksonville State earlier this year and has reached double figures four times, but he scored just six in Wednesday night's Pitt loss.
Forward Josiah Harris has really struggled shooting the basketball so far this season, making just three of his last 19 field goal attempts over the last four games; he is shooting just 24.5% overall for the season.
Seth Wilson, too, is still searching for his shooting stroke after going 0-for-11 against St. John's and is connecting on just 23.5% of his 68 field goal attempts. Forward Akok Akok made his WVU regular-season debut on Wednesday night against Pitt (All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks).
West Virginia (3-5) did see the return of senior Akok Akok against Pitt after the forward missed the first seven games because of a medical emergency suffered in the George Mason exhibition game on Oct. 27. Akok grabbed two rebounds and blocked two shots in eight minutes of action against the Panthers.
Arizona transfer Kerr Kriisa's nine-game NCAA suspension will conclude after Saturday's game, meaning the Mountaineers will have another important player available for next Saturday's matchup against Massachusetts.
However, the final piece of the puzzle still remains in limbo.
RaeQuan Battle's transfer waiver was recently denied by the NCAA, but the former Montana State forward is part of a six-state lawsuit alleging the NCAA's transfer rule for college athletes violates antitrust law. The states seek a temporary restraining order against the NCAA from enforcing the transfer rule. Other states involved are Colorado, Illinois, New York, Ohio and Tennessee.
No timetable on a resolution to the lawsuit has been established.
Saturday's Drexel game will tip off at 4 p.m. and will be televised on ESPN+ (Nick Farrell, Warren Baker and Anjelica Trinone). Mountaineer Sports Network radio coverage with Tony Caridi will begin at 3 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia, online via WVUsports.com and the Varsity Network and WVU Gameday apps.
Tickets are still available and can be purchased by logging on to WVUGAME.com.
