WVU Basketball Records 3rd 20-Loss Season in Program History

WVU Basketball fell to Texas Tech at home 81-70 on Saturday night, giving the Mountaineers their 20th loss of the season. This marks just the third time in program history that West Virginia has reached this mark.

The first two times occurred during the 2001-02 and 2018-19 seasons.

The 2001-02 team finished 8-20 under head coach Gale Catlett, who coached his last season at West Virginia this year. The Mountaineers started 7-2 before only winning one Big East game during conference play.

Bob Huggins coached the 2018-19 team, who finished 15-21 while trying to rebuild the program from the ‘Press Virginia’ era. West Virginia entered the season 13th in the AP preseason poll and did reach an 8-4 record before Big 12 play. WVU went 4-14 during Big 12 play before winning a couple of games in the conference tournament. The Mountaineers accepted a CBI bid and fell to Coastal Carolina to end the year.

This season, West Virginia had to quickly recover from Bob Huggins’ resignation in June and promote then-assistant Josh Eilert to interim HC. Eilert and his staff retained four returning players and a trio of transfers, then mixed that group with another transfer group in the late months of the summer. After waiver denials, a suspension and a freak injury, West Virginia just had eight scholarship players available for the first nine games of the season. Once WVU got all of their players back into the rotation, it was too late for the team to turn things around in a tough conference schedule.

West Virginia will host TCU on Senior Night and play at Cincinnati to conclude the regular season. WVU will then head to Kansas City for the Big 12 Tournament either as a 13 or 14-seed.