MORGANTOWN — Just 23 seconds separated the WVU men’s basketball team from a possible historic moment inside Allen Fieldhouse.
That, in itself, is a sign of just how much the Mountaineers battled No. 3 Kansas on Saturday afternoon, although the Jayhawks’ 76-74 victory may have ended up more as an emotional dagger in the backs of the Mountaineers rather than some type of moral victory.
Over the course of 39 minutes, WVU’s duo of Erik Stevenson and Tre Mitchell served as the answers.
Every time Kansas seemed poised to steal the momentum, Mitchell and Stevenson stole it right back.
Every time the Mountaineers (16-13, 5-11 Big 12) seemed ready to simply hand the game to Kansas (24-5, 12-4), Stevenson and Mitchell said, “not so fast.”
They combined for 43 points, 17 buckets and five 3-pointers on a day when WVU was likely as big an underdog as its been all season.
We highlight the duo’s effort here, because in those final 23 seconds, neither one of them got a single touch of the ball.
It should have been Stevenson’s moment to go for the tie or the win.
If not Stevenson, then maybe Mitchell slips into a gap and takes a shot to try and send the game into overtime.
Again, neither touched the ball.
It wasn’t because they weren’t supposed to.
“We were going to run basically what we ran for Erik during the Auburn game,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said on his radio postgame show. “With the way (Kansas) lined up, I think it would have been there.“
Joe Toussaint brought the ball up the floor and then drove it to the right side.
“Joe was doing what he was supposed to be doing, but he kind of got caught off and then he couldn’t turned back around,” Huggins said.
Stevenson was set to come off a screen set by Tre Mitchell, and then Stevenson and Mitchell were going to play a two-man game.
If Kansas defenders pounced on Stevenson, the plan was for him to try and get the ball to Mitchell. If Stevenson had a look, he would take the shot.
Instead, Toussaint just kept dribbling and tried to go at the basket, where he got caught off by Kansas forward K.J. Adams.
Toussaint tried to get a shot off, but Adams knocked it out of his hands and right back to Toussaint, who then passed it to Emmitt Matthews.
Matthews gave it back to Toussaint, who slid his feet and was called for travelling with 0.4 seconds remaining.
It was the Mountaineers’ 21st and final turnover of the game, a season high.
“I thought we were going to get a good look,” Huggins said. “We just couldn’t get it turned back.”
Kansas’ defense had something to do with that.
“They did what good teams do, they flooded that side of the floor,” Huggins continued. “Once we started on that side of the floor with the clock being what the clock was, (Toussaint) then tried to get it to the middle and kick it across or whatever. It just didn’t happen.”
It’s here we pause, because it’s hard to blame Toussaint in that moment.
There were certainly other things to look at in the previous 39 minutes, including the 21 turnovers, of which eight came from starting point guard Kedrian Johnson.
It was a game in which 23 seconds summed up just how trying a season it’s been for WVU, but 39 minutes of what its full potential could be against the best team in the Big 12, maybe the entire country.
How do you sum that up? Well, sometimes the right words can’t be summoned.
Yet Huggins tried his best.
“I thought we played really well,” Huggins said. “We turned it over too many times, but they turned it over, too. It was a game that had good players in it. I thought our guys really competed. I think we’re getting better and better as the season goes on.”
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