Saturday afternoon, the 2004-05 West Virginia men’s basketball team will be honored during the first timeout of the second quarter of the Mountaineers’ Big 12 opening football game against Kansas.
Prior to John Beilein taking over the program in 2002, the Mountaineers missed out on the NCAA Tournament in four consecutive seasons. And if you go back a little further, they only punched their ticket twice in Gale Catlett’s last ten years as the man.
Beilein completely turned things around by year three, helping lead a run to the Elite Eight. After getting out to a blistering 10-0 start, including a win over No. 17 North Carolina State, the Mountaineers hit adversity. They would go on to lose six of their next seven which featured a neutral court loss to in-state “rival” Marshall, kicking off the start of a five-game losing streak.
College basketball has always been about getting right at the hot time and West Virginia did exactly that. They won six of their final eight games of the regular season, pulling off a two-game sweep of the Pitt Panthers who were ranked inside the top 20 for both meetings.
WVU entered the Big East tournament as the No. 8 seed, but it didn’t matter. After a dominating opening-round victory over Providence, they scrapped and clawed their way to victory against Boston College in the quarterfinals and Villanova in the semifinals, setting up a date with Syracuse for the conference championship. The Orange had a 10-point lead at the half and while WVU played much better defense in the final 20 minutes, it wasn’t enough to usher a comeback victory.
The Mountaineers received an at-large bid as a No. 7 seed in the big dance which pit them against No. 10 seed Creighton. It was a tight game from start to finish, but WVU sneaked by 63-61 thanks to a Tyrone Sally breakaway dunk with just 2.4 seconds left.
The magic continued two days later when West Virginia stunned the nation, knocking off No. 2 seed Wake Forest, led by future NBA all-star Chris Paul. Talk about a team that had a flare for the dramatics, they went back-and-forth with the Demon Deacons all game, providing for a thrilling finish in regulation, and the first overtime period before getting some separation late in the second overtime. Mike Gansey led all scorers in the game with 29 points.
Once again, it went down to the wire in a Sweet Sixteen matchup with Bob Knight’s Texas Tech Red Raiders. The Mountaineers were clinging on to a 62-60 lead with under forty seconds left and were able to get a stop when Darryl Dora missed an easy shot right at the basket.
The Mountaineers’ special run came to a heartbreaking end in the Elite Eight, falling to Louisville 93-85 in overtime.
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