MORGANTOWN — It wasn’t exactly a white flag RaeQuan Battle waved during his postgame media conference Tuesday night, nor should it have been.
“Never that,” he said when asked if there was discouragement among the ranks. “We have until the (Big 12) tournament pretty much. We have all that time. We get Jesse (Edwards) back in about three, four games. Hopefully we can win a couple of games before he gets back.”
Battle is to be credited. It’s not easy for college athletes to get behind that microphone and stay composed, not when they are in the middle of a losing season like the one the Mountaineers are experiencing right now.
Battle did it with class and honor.
But his theory isn’t going to make a lot of sense to a lot of people.
That was evident by the actual attendance in Tuesday’s loss against Kansas State (it was nowhere close to the 10,063 the school listed).
To those who have already given up on this season — and no one is blaming you, by the way — you don’t want to hear about the miracle.
Which would be Edwards gets back from his wrist injury and suddenly there is that spark in the hoops program.
“I think what he’s saying is we certainly want to be playing our best basketball right now, but we’re not,” WVU head coach Josh Eilert said. “If we stay together and continue to work this thing out, hopefully we’re playing our best basketball in March. That’s the goal of every team.”
That spark would have to mean an immediate emergence of chemistry, a defensive presence and an offensive outburst.
That’s a lot to put on one guy’s shoulders, even one who is sizable as Edwards at 6-foot-11 and 240 pounds.
All of a sudden, WVU goes from worst to world beaters, right?
The Mountaineers prove everyone wrong and become the greatest story in college basketball by doing something no one in the history of the game has ever accomplished.
Seems obviously far-fetched, except to those involved in the WVU program.
The next time an athlete or coach who are in the midst of a tough season comes out to a press conference and says, “Yeah, we really stink” or “We’ve got no chance at making things better,” it will be the first time in history.
That’s what has always fascinated me, the amount of distance that can sometimes exist between the view of an athlete or coach and the perceived reality of everyone else following the program.
As long as there is that glimmer of hope that this team can suddenly get things rolling once Edwards gets healthy, Eilert and his players should rightfully grasp onto that hope like a starving man would to a Big Mac.
The rest of us are already moving on and thinking about what move WVU athletic director Wren Baker has up his sleeve in deciding the future of the program.
That’s a pretty wide gap from one side of the spectrum to the other.
An unfortunate gap, too, because this season could have been different if the equation was changed.
WVU’s best player is not healing from a wrist injury, he’s playing at Kentucky.
WVU’s best pure shooter is not in hiding, he’s playing at Arizona State.
If Battle had been cleared to play by the NCAA by the start of the season, this could have been different.
It could have been different if Kerr Kriisa had never been suspended nine games by the NCAA or if Edwards had never hurt his wrist.
But those things did happen, and that is just way too much for one program — any program — to overcome.
To those in a WVU men’s basketball uniform and the coaches who refuse to see things that way, my hat is truly tipped to you. Going through what you guys have gone through, you deserve better.
Please just don’t think any less of those who see this season in a different light.
