Former Wildcat transfers out of new school one year after leaving Arizona Basketball

Finally hitting the hardwood

Once Kriisa finally got around to playing, things didn't get much better. West Virginia amassed a 4-5 record while the Estonian guard was serving his suspension, and things only got worse from there.

Statistically, he did fine: he started all 23 of the games he appeared in and was West Virginia's fourth-leading scorer with a respectable 11 points per game. He led the team by a wide margin with 4.7 assists per game and 109 total — over 30 more than Quinn Slazinski's 71 (2nd) — and notched 19 steals, just two off from the team-lead.

However, the on-court results told a very different story. With only five players averaging 25-plus minutes per game, West Virginia had virtually no depth and heaped the burden on the starters. Predictably, it wasn't a winning strategy and the Mountaineers went 5-18 after Kriisa's return to finish the season at 9-23 (4-14 in Big 12) — good for last in the conference.

Kriisa has simply never experienced this type of losing in college. He played in 18 losses at West Virginia in one season, and was still practicing and traveling with the group for all 23 losses. During his entire three-year tenure at Arizona under Tommy Lloyd, he experienced 20 losses. There was no removing the label for the interim Eilert, and a change of leadership had to be made.