MORGANTOWN — It was a play late in the first half Saturday. The shot clock was down to its final ticks and Erik Stevenson was in the toughest of spots, some 24-feet away from the rim and with two defenders in his face.
As far as tough spots go, this was actually not a bad one compared to the weight of pressure that had been thrust on his shoulders recently.
You know of what we speak. Certainly Stevenson does.
“It’s been a long two, three weeks,” he said after scoring 31 points on 10 of 17 shooting in leading WVU to an 80-77 victory against No. 15 Auburn at the Coliseum.
The technical fouls, the shots that just wouldn’t drop, all while the Mountaineers (13-8, 2-6 Big 12) went from nationally ranked at No. 24 to fighting to get out of the Big 12’s cellar.
Personally, Stevenson referred to it as the annual Stevie-slump, which has hit him at different times in each of his five seasons in college basketball.
WVU, too, was in a Stevie-slump, because without its top shooter, the Mountaineers were seemingly out of options.
On paper, that doesn’t seem true, because there have been many times guys like Tre Mitchell, Joe Toussaint, Seth Wilson or Jimmy Bell Jr. have stepped up to answer the call.
But, if Saturday proved nothing else, Stevenson is the straw that stirs the drink for WVU. Without him, the Mountaineers can still score, but their rhythm and timing are off in doing so.
Without him, it takes a great individual effort by those other guys to keep WVU competitive, but when Stevenson is on, as he was against Auburn (16-5), the round pegs are going into the round holes, so to speak.
“It’s really been taking a toll on me, because it’s my job to help the team in any way I can,” Stevenson said. “They rely on me to score, and if I’m not scoring, it’s hurting the team.”
And so we go back to that moment in the first half.
Stevenson had to force up a shot, this time it went in.
“When that shot went in,” he said. “I knew it was going to be a day.”
And a day it was. We fast forward to the second half, after Auburn made its big run to get back into the game.
The Tigers had cut a 17-point deficit down to just a single digit, a culmination of good shooting from Auburn and some head-scratching turnovers by the Mountaineers, but Stevenson answered the bell again.
Another three with 3:37 remaining made it a 71-67 game, yet another 3-pointer at the 2:03 mark made it 74-70.
Just when you thought WVU was about to drop another heartbreaker, Stevenson stirred that drink up real nice.
“As he gleefully announced in the locker room after the game, his recruitment came down to Auburn and us,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said. “He made the right choice.”
To that point, so did Huggins in sticking with Stevenson.
It was just a matter of weeks ago when Huggins announced the guard was on his last chance.
If Stevenson hurt the team one more time with his on-court antics, then Huggins was going to remove him from the team.
That was the low point. What Stevenson accomplished against Auburn was a high point in a season with so many critical games left in it.
As it stands, WVU has weathered a great storm and took its share of gut punches.
With this victory, the Mountaineers are closing in on the top 20 in just about every hoops power ranking out there other than the national top 25 polls, which hold very little water to begin with.
They have taken some uppercuts and are now seemingly countering with their own.
At the end of the game, Stevenson was swarmed by his teammates, before taking a moment to raise his hand in the air in a moment of triumph.
“It’s a credit to my teammates,” Stevenson said. “They really helped me through everything. They always kept telling me to shoot the ball, ‘We need you to shoot it. We need you to score.’ I’ve got to credit those guys, honestly.”
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