Lorient’s Career-High 26 Leads WVU Over Lehigh

Sunday, November 9

Morgantown, W.Va.

3 p.m.

West Virginia University

3-0,0-0Big 12

Lehigh

1-2,0-0Patriot

Lehigh

West Virginia

Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks

November 09, 2025 05:33 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score Photo Gallery

By: John Antonik

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia used a career-high 26 points from senior forward Brenen Lorient to defeat Lehigh 69-47 Sunday afternoon at Hope Coliseum.

Lorient, an Ocala, Florida, resident, who tallied 20 points twice last year while at North Texas, was 11 of 15 from the floor, including 3 of 4 from 3-point distance, while grabbing seven rebounds.

"He was extremely efficient," West Virginia coach Ross Hodge said. "When he is shooting the 3 well like he did today, that adds a completely different dimension to his game and to our game. Honor (Huff) and Trey (Eaglestaff) are going to get so much attention from the 3-point line and that opens up space for other players. If you add (Lorient) to the mix, it can be really challenging.

"I thought he just made very, very simple plays repeatedly," Hodge added.

Center Harlan Obioha chipped in with 12 points and a team-best eight rebounds to help West Virginia improve to 3-0 on the season.

The Mountaineers limited Lehigh (1-2) to just 34.8% from the floor while forcing the Mountain Hawks into 16 turnovers. It's the 26^th straight game a Hodge-coached team has held the opposition to fewer than 70 points in a game dating back to last year when he was at North Texas.

"I thought the first 15 minutes of the game were as good of a defensive stretch as we've had since we've been playing together," Hodge said. "Our activity level was really high. We got deflections that led to simple plays on offense. I thought we had a good flow and everybody was involved. The ball was moving, and it was kind of finding the right player on each possession."

Freshman guard Andrew Urpsevic led Lehigh with 16 points on 6 of 12 shooting. Junior guard Joshua Ingram contributed 14.

West Virginia jumped out to a 42-20 halftime lead, but much like it did in its season opener when it outscored second-ranked Houston 34-31 in the second half, Lehigh played even with its power conference opponent.

The two teams today finished the second half with 27 points each.

"We didn't play as well early in the second half as we would have liked, but you've got to give the other team and the other coaches credit," Hodge said. "It's easy to always point at what you didn't do or did do, but sometimes you've got to tip your hat to the other team."

On the glass, West Virginia was much better this afternoon with a 38 to 25 advantage - the first time this year the Mountaineers were able to outrebound their opponent.

Huff, WVU's leading scorer coming into today's game, finished with 8 points while Jasper Floyd had 7.

Eleven different players got onto the floor today for the Mountaineers.

Lehigh, making its first appearance in Morgantown since Dec. 30, 2018, has lost all six meetings against West Virginia and is 0-4 in the Coliseum.

West Virginia remains at home to play rival Pitt on Thursday night at Hope Coliseum. The Panthers are 2-0 with early wins over Youngstown State and Longwood prior to Monday night's game against Eastern Michigan.

The Panthers have enjoyed recent success against the Mountaineers winning the last two games 86-62 in Pittsburgh last year and 80-63 in Morgantown two years ago.

Limited tickets remain for Thursday night's game, to be televised nationally on FS1. Remaining tickets are on sale through the Mountaineer Ticket Office and can be purchased by logging on to WVUGAME.com.