Stock Up, Stock Down: Tournament Resume, Eagelstaff, Bad Luck + More

Evaluations from West Virginia's loss to Xavier.

West Virginia University guard Treysen Eaglestaff | Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

The 2025 Shriners Children's Charleston Classic did not treat West Virginia kindly this weekend, losing a pair of games and dropping its record to 5-2 on the season.

Who improved? What areas are concerning? An updated look at the WVU basketball stock watch.

Stock Up: Treysen Eaglestaff

Finally, the North Dakota transfer looked like the player West Virginia thought it was getting when it snagged him out of the portal. He didn't force anything and looked comfortable early on, just playing instead of thinking and second-guessing what to do. Hopefully for Ross Hodge's sake, this performance is a springboard for him moving forward.

Stock Down: Perimeter defense/luck

I'm lumping these two together because of how red-hot Xavier was from deep, regardless of how well a shot was contested. There were a handful of occasions where someone lost their man, and it led to a pretty clean look, which can't happen against a good three-point shooting team. You have to run them off the line and get all up in their jersey. It showed up at times, just not consistently enough. But my goodness, whenever WVU did have it covered, shots were still going in. It's been a while since I've seen a three-point barrage like that. Just unreal to go 16/25.

Stock Up: Brenen Lorient

After what happened at the end of the Clemson game, I had my eyes locked on Lorient. How would he bounce back after the bad end-of-game decision? He jumped out to a quick eight points and was pretty active on the defensive end. It was far from his best game, but it was good seeing him put that decision behind him.

Stock Down: Tournament resume

After the loss to Clemson, I didn't jump to it's time to hit the panic button, and I'm not going to do that tonight either. However, going 0-2 in this MTE and losing to an Xavier team that's probably going to be a bubble team is not ideal. The Mountaineers still have Wake Forest and Ohio State as challenging non-conference opponents, and then have the brutal Big 12 slate. For a team that's going to likely be on the bubble, you can't afford to drop these types of games.

MORE STORIES FROM WEST VIRGINIA ON SI

Big, Physical Division II Transfer Running Back Locks In Visit with West Virginia

Chance Moore Bursts Onto the Scene with a West Virginia Debut Fans Will Not Forget

Big Ten and Big 12 Schools Making Late Effort to Flip WVU QB Commit Wyatt Brown

Who's Next? West Virginia's Top Remaining Targets After the Commitment of Kevin Brown

Kevin Brown Reveals Why Early WVU Visits Left a Bad Taste Before Rodriguez Arrived