MORGANTOWN — Javon Small came to pass Tuesday night.
And score. And rebound a little, too.
Having put the WVU men’s basketball team on his shoulders for the majority of the season, Small did it one more time in what may have been the most critical of times.
Needing a win to pad its resumé for the NCAA tournament, the senior delivered with 18 points, seven assists and four rebounds, as WVU held on for a 71-69 victory against Utah inside Jon M. Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City.
There is no other way to state it other than WVU (18-12, 9-10 Big 12) holding on, because the game was a bar-room brawl for 40 minutes that saw momentum switch to both sides.
It was a game that saw WVU erase a 12-point deficit in the first half and then nearly lose a six-point lead in the final 12 seconds.
It wasn’t officially decided until WVU guard Joe Yesufu blocked Utah’s Gabe Madsen’s last-second heave from 55 feet out as the final horn sounded.
“That was a fun ending again,” WVU head coach Darian DeVries said on his radio postgame show.
The game’s physicality was seen in the nostrils of WVU center Eduardo Andre, who played the second half with gauze in his nose after taking an elbow to the face in the final seconds of the first half.
Blood ran out onto the floor as Andre writhed in pain. He was eventually taken to the locker room, but came back out and was ready for the second half.
“Eduardo played with four cotton things in his nose,” DeVries said. “He’ll probably need a whole quart of blood tonight, as much as that thing was leaking.”
In the final minutes, it was Andre who dealt a punishing blow after catching a lob pass and dunking it to give WVU a 63-58 lead with 2:51 remaining.
That lob was from Small, which takes us back to his role of how he came up big to close out this game.
The lob came after Small had to fight his way through a pack of Utah defenders just to get near the foul line.
Slightly off-balanced, and with the shot clock about to expire, Small somehow found Andre and simply laid the ball up high to a point where only the 7-footer could get it.
It was just seconds before that Small had stepped back off a screen from Andre to nail a 3-pointer that broke a 58-58 tie.
With 36 seconds left, it was Small who took matters into his own hands again. A look at a backdoor cut didn’t work, so Small came back and got the ball and drove right at the rim.
He threw a floater into the air that banked in for a 68-64 lead.
“To be honest, it was just Javon making a play, let’s be real,” DeVries said.
Even with the heroics, Utah (16-14, 8-11) nearly pulled off a stunner.
Madsen hit a 3-pointer with 3.7 seconds remaining to cut WVU’s lead to 70-67.
On the inbounds play, WVU forward Jonathan Powell caught the pass, but collapsed to the floor while doing so. Before falling out of bounds, Powell threw the ball towards Utah’s basket.
Jake Wahlin scooped up the loose ball and scored it with 1.7 seconds left to cut the lead to 70-69.
WVU guard Sencire Harris was then fouled and he made one of two at the line for the final score.
Madsen, who finished with 23 points for the Utes, took an inbounds pass and one dribble before launching a prayer that Yesufu got a piece of on the final play.
“We came out and didn’t have much that first 15 minutes,” DeVries said. “What I was really proud about was they bounced out of it. They started to find it a little bit and then they started to play with that confidence and swagger we love to see.”
The matchup featured the return of Josh Eilert, the Mountaineers’ interim head coach last season who now serves in that same role with the Utes.
This was Eilert’s third game since the school fired Craig Smith last month, and he’s now 1-2 after going 9-23 at WVU last season.
“I want to give a lot of credit to Josh, he had his team ready in a tough situation,” DeVries said. “They’re fighting and they’re well coached right now. He’s doing a good job in a tough spot. He’s one of those good guys in this profession.”
Amani Hansberry added 12 points and six rebounds for the Mountaineers, who now return to Morgantown on Saturday to close out the regular season against UCF inside the Coliseum.
