Gabe Osabuohien was summoned to the sideline with 12 minutes left to go and all Bob Huggins could muster at the time was throwing his hands up in the air, as to ask his forward, “What the heck was that?”
In reality, “I don’t think I can really what I said to him,” Huggins said after the Mountaineers held on for a critical 56-53 victory Wednesday against 15th-ranked Connecticut in front of 12,045 fans inside the Coliseum.
Osabuohien had just launched — and missed — a 3-pointer in a one-point game.
Osabuohien’s role on the Mountaineers (8-1) is a versatile one, but taking threes is not on that list. Never has been, either.
“He knows better than to shoot the three,” Huggins continued. “One, I think he was tired. Two, he was frustrated, because he had just missed two free throws, and we were dumb enough to throw him the ball and not thinking he might not shoot it.”
This is the part of the story — if you were making a movie out of what was a rough and rugged game like the two schools had played so many times in the old Big East days — where the hero was down on his luck and seemingly on his way to giving up.
Except heroes don’t give up. Gabe Osabuhien, if he’s proven anything about himself during his three seasons at WVU, is not going to give up, either.
We flash forward some 11 minutes later.
It’s still close, with WVU clinging to a 53-51 lead, and we do mean clinging.
It was at this point the Mountaineers had already missed so many opportunities to put the game away.
Taz Sherman, who was great after scoring 23 points, missed a dunk attempt with 90 seconds to go. WVU shot a horrid 12 of 27 from the foul line, which was so bad that fans actually began to cheer when a WVU player actually made one.
On this particular moment, Osabuohien’s latest chance to shine came from another missed free throw, this one coming from Sherman, who is generally money from the line.
There were just 21 seconds left and Osabohien — listed at 6-foot-7 — somehow snuck around UConn’s 6-foot-9 forward Akok Akok and grabbed the offensive rebound.
“Gabe’s rebound is the play of the game, by far,” said WVU guard Sean McNeil, who finished with 16 points after missing a game with a bad back.
“That play right there is going to show up on the stat sheet as an offensive rebound,” added Sherman. “It’s way bigger than that. That offensive rebound, you don’t know what happens without it.”
Osabuohien grabbed the board and flipped the ball out to Sherman, who passed it to McNeil. McNeil was fouled and made two free throws with 17 seconds left to take a 55-51 lead.
UConn did not up. Isaiah Whaley got a tip-in with seven seconds left to cut the lead and then McNeil added one more free throw for the final score.
The Huskies had a chance to tie it, but RJ Cole missed a three at the buzzer.
“Without that offensive rebound, we may be in overtime right now,” McNeil said.
The point to all of this is Osabuohien wasn’t just the hero, because he came up with the play of the game.
It’s that, just a few minutes earlier, he was down, but not out.
He went from the doghouse to the penthouse. It’s easy to be the hero when everything is going your way, but it’s a completely different deal when you take an embarrassing shot, get benched, and then come back to be the hero.
“It was a huge play,” Huggins said of Osabuhien’s offensive rebound. “Gabe made a lot of huge plays. He’s good at keeping balls alive.
“Gabe, believe it or not, is a pretty intelligent guy. He knows if he had taken another one of those (3-pointers), he may never had played again.”
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