KANSAS CITY – Postseason play begins Tuesday afternoon in Kansas City when West Virginia takes on Cincinnati in a Phillips 66 Big 12 Tournament first round game at T-Mobile Center.
 
The Mountaineers and Bearcats played each other two days ago in Cincinnati, the Bearcats coming away with a 92-56 victory on Senior Day. UC shot 70% in the second half and scored the same number of points in the second half the Mountaineers scored for the entire game.
 
"I thought we played fairly well in the first half, down 14 before cutting it to seven, and there were a lot of positives there you could hang your hat on," West Virginia coach Josh Eilert said. "We have the ball coming out of the half and start to make a run, but nothing went our way."
 
Thirteen different Cincinnati players got on the floor and 11 got into the scoring column, including guard Dan Skillings Jr., whose 17 points led all scorers. John Newman III tallied 14, Jamil Reynolds 13 and Simas Lukosius added 12 for the Bearcats in avenging their Jan. 31 loss to West Virginia in Morgantown.
 
In that game, West Virginia overcame a double-digit, second-half deficit on the strength of center Jesse Edwards' 25 points and 10 rebounds. Edwards scored 19 of his points in the second half, including a game-sealing free throw with 21 seconds left.
 
Edwards, who recently poured in a career-high 36 points in a home loss to TCU, was limited to just eight points and four rebounds in 18 minutes of action last weekend at Cincinnati.
 
The only WVU player to reach double figures against the Bearcats was guard Noah Farrakhan, who came off the bench to score 12.
 
The last time West Virginia played consecutive games against the same opponent was in 2021 when Oklahoma State defeated the Mountaineers 85-80 in Morgantown to conclude the regular season and then beat them 72-69 in the opening game of the Big 12 Tournament.
 
Defense has been West Virginia's Achilles heel all season long. The Mountaineers have given up more than 90 points five times in their last nine games and are surrendering and average of 76.4 points per game, including an average of 81.4 points in 18 Big 12 contests.
 
"It's a little bit of everything," Eilert said of his team's defensive struggles this season. "We don't have a whole lot of natural defenders on the floor so there are a lot of gaps, and we need a lot of help."
 
It's the highest opponents' scoring average WVU is allowing since the 2019 season when Bob Huggins' team gave up and average of 77.4 points per game on the way to a 21-loss season.
 
Over the last 40 years, WVU's 2002 team surrendered an average of 78.9 points per game playing in the Big East Conference, while Gale Catlett's 1991 squad allowed an average of 80.4 points per game playing in the Atlantic 10 Conference.
 
In the early 1970s, before advanced scouting, analytics and modern defensive play took over the game, West Virginia was regularly surrendering more than 80 points per game, including a high of 88.7 points per contest in 1971.
 
This year, West Virginia is tied with Rhode Island and Toledo for 293^rd in scoring defense and ranks 229^th in field goal percentage defense, allowing teams to shoot 44.6% from the floor.
 
That has overshadowed WVU's accurate shooting in recent losses to Baylor, Texas Tech and TCU when the Mountaineers shot better than 50% from the floor and still lost by double-digit margins.
 
Overall, West Virginia is shooting 42.6% and is averaging 69.3 points per game.
 
Guard RaeQuan Battle's 16.2 points per game average leads the Mountaineers. Edwards is scoring at a 15-points-per-game clip, forward Quinn Slazinski is averaging 12.2 points and guard Kerr Kriisa 11 points per outing.
 
Edwards is the team's top rebounder with an average of 8.2 boards per game, while Kriisa has handed out a team-high 102 assists.
 
No West Virginia players were listed on the three postseason All-Big 12 teams or the honorable mention list announced on Sunday. Skillings Jr. and Aziz Bandaogo made the honorable mention list for Cincinnati while Newman was on the Big 12 All-Defensive Team.
 
Tuesday afternoon's West Virginia-Cincinnati game will follow the day's first game featuring 13^th-seeded Oklahoma State and 12^th seeded UCF at 12:30 p.m. ET.
 
The No. 11-seeded Cincinnati (18-13) vs. No. 14-seeded West Virginia (9-22) matchup is slated to tip off at 3 p.m. ET and will be televised on ESPN+ (Rich Hollenberg and Fran Fraschilla).
 
All nine West Virginia victories this year have come in Morgantown. WVU is 0-9 in road games and 0-4 in neutral site contests.
 
"We'll see how we respond," Eilert said. "If we don't have a bad taste in our mouths for three straight days, and we don't compete at the highest level on Tuesday, then we've got to look at ourselves in the mirror and figure out if we really want to play the game of basketball."
 
Mountaineers Sports Network radio coverage with Tony Caridi and studio host David Kahn begins at 2 p.m. ET on stations throughout West Virginia, online via WVUsports.com and the Varsity Network and WVU Gameday apps.
 
The winner will meet sixth-seeded Kansas in a second-round game on Wednesday night at 9:30 p.m. ET.