New Year’s Eve is supposed to be one of the worst travel days of the year, but for WVU basketball, the travel woes came one day early.
Originally scheduled to arrive in Lawrence, Kansas at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, plane issues pushed the Mountaineers’ arrival back nearly 10 hours.
“The travel day was tough,” WVU coach Darian DeVries said. “We were supposed to leave at 4 and get here at 5:30 and we ended up pulling into the hotel at about 2:15-2:30 in the morning.”
The team was to play No. 7 Kansas less than 12 hours later at 2 p.m. DeVries canceled a morning shootaround just so his players could get as much sleep as possible.
And yet, none of that seemed to affect the Mountaineers, who pulled off a stunning 62-61 upset for the team’s first-ever win inside Allen Fieldhouse.
“I think any time you can get a road win in this league it’s a big deal. Any time you can come here, it’s an even bigger deal,” DeVries said. “We told the team only one team a year can come in here and win typically and out mindset was we want to be that team.”
Making the upset even more unlikely was the fact that West Virginia was missing two starters due to injuries, Tucker DeVries and Amani Hansberry.
In their place, Eduardo Andre had a career night with 15 points, six rebounds and four blocks and freshman Jonathan Powell scored 11 points with three three-pointers.
How did the Mountaineers do it? The shirt DeVries wore to the postgame press conference explained it all, simply reading “no excuses” across the front.
“Like I’ve told the guys, injuries, flight delays, those aren’t things you can control, so figure it out,” DeVries said.”Find a way to put that stuff behind you and focus on what we can control and I thought they did a good job of that.”
The win was already the Mountaineers’ second over a top-10 team this season and will put them squarely in conversations for the NCAA Tournament when the time comes. But it was also just game No. 12 of the year and the first of 20 in the Big 12.
“We also told them it’s one game,” DeVries said. “There are 19 more of these left so enjoy it, but there’s going to be another one on Saturday and then another on Wednesday.”
WVU basketball returns home to host Oklahoma State on Saturday at noon. It’s a doubleheader in the WVU Coliseum as the women will host BYU at 6 p.m.
For a related story, WVU basketball jumps up NET Rankings following Kansas win.
