Texas basketball at West Virginia: Prediction, scouting report for Longhorns' Top 25 test

For the second time in an eight-day span, No. 10 Texas will battle a Top 25 foe in conference play. This time, Texas must travel to No. 24 West Virginia for a Saturday matinee (1 p.m., ESPN+, 103.1). In the Vic Schaefer era, UT is 7-5 in regular-season games in which both the Longhorns and their Big 12 opponent are ranked.

Here's what you need to know about the matchup:

Solid starters or boosts off the bench?

In a 74-47 win at Texas Tech on Wednesday, Texas (14-1) got double-double performances from forwards Aaliyah Moore (18 points, 12 rebounds) and DeYona Gaston (17 points, 11 rebounds). Moore shot 8-for-10 from the field. Gaston knocked down eight of her 13 shots.

Both Moore and Gaston came off the bench in the 27-point win. They have experience as starters, but Texas also has a lot of depth in the paint. Khadija Faye has 32 career starts, and sophomore Amina Muhammad is enjoying a breakout season. Taylor Jones, who leads UT in scoring and rebounding, has been cleared to return after missing the past four games with a hip injury.

So is Texas better off using Moore and Gaston as starters or boosts off the bench?

"It's a matchup situation," Schaefer said Friday. "They obviously played well for one game together. As they know and they would tell you, we've got to stack games now. You stack games by stacking practices.

"I'm blessed with kind of a smorgasbord of different players that can do different things, and so the challenge for me right now is trying to fit all these pieces and make it work. That's the challenge because obviously we have a lot of different pieces that can do a lot of different things."

Without Harmon, Texas struggling with turnovers

This will be Texas' fourth game without point guard Rori Harmon, who will miss the rest of the season with a knee injury. She still leads the nation with her 6.64 assist-to-turnover ratio. In the 12 games she played this season, Texas had 248 assists to 152 turnovers.

In three games without Harmon, Texas has 55 turnovers and just 44 assists. The 23 turnovers it committed against Baylor on Dec. 30 and its 18 turnovers against Texas Tech on Wednesday were its highest and third-highest totals of the season.

Meet the new Mountaineers

West Virginia (13-0) and Baylor (13-0) are the only undefeated teams left in the Big 12, and the Mountaineers are off to the second-best start in school history. Junior JJ Quinerly is still the face of the West Virginia program, but WVU has also been led by its newcomers. Head coach Mark Kellogg and starting guard Jordan Harrison were at Stephen F. Austin last season, and offseason transfers Lauren Fields (Arizona) and Tirzah Moore (Oral Roberts) are receiving plenty of playing time.

Texas fans might remember Fields from her time as an all-conference guard at Oklahoma State. Fields visited Texas in 2022 after deciding to transfer from Oklahoma State but instead spent the 2022-23 season at Arizona.

Texas vs. West Virginia prediction

Texas. Both UT and WVU have a solid win on their résumé — Texas beat a UConn team that is currently ranked 12th while West Virginia upset a Penn State team that was ranked 25th at the time — but the Longhorns are slightly more battle-tested, and that matters.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas, West Virginia basketball teams meet as ranked conference rivals