MORGANTOWN — The words that were meant to fill up this space today were supposed to tell a story of how a bunch of young men came together for the WVU men’s basketball team Wednesday night and gutted out a terrific 69-65 victory against Cincinnati inside the Coliseum.
There was so much raw emotion in this game, from Kerr Kriisa pounding his chest triumphantly and screaming at the top of his lungs to all the WVU players huddling together afterward, leaning on each other for support.
RaeQuan Battle had just come off two road games that might have been the worst road games of his career.
Yet when it came time for someone to step up and make a clutch shot, Battle somehow erased those two games of frustration and nailed the game-clinching 3-pointer with just a minute left to go.
Jesse Edwards, who for a month was injured and unable to help, other than send out encouragement, was the man he had been projected to be at the start of the season.
He had 25 points and 10 rebounds and was nothing but smiles afterward while listening to John Denver with his teammates.
This was a story meant to be told by the players who factored into an important victory.
Sadly, they never really got that chance. Their postgame media conference was cut drastically short and the players were ushered out by a WVU official before five minutes had even elapsed.
Edwards was still in mid-sentence when the players were told they were finished and told to head back to the locker room.
Why? Officially the answer was because Cincinnati head coach Wes Miller and Bearcats’ forward Simas Lukosius were ready to take the podium and WVU’s sports information department wanted to get them in and out so they could get on the bus and head home.
That makes complete sense, but there is a deeper tone that has been struck in recent years between media relations at our colleges and universities across the country — certainly this is not just a WVU thing — and the media itself.
Please don’t read this as just another media person whining and complaining about how hard their job is, and please don’t read this as WVU acting like a bunch of military police trying to crash on the constitutional rights of the freedom of the press.
The world obviously changed with the COVID-19 pandemic, as we all had to distance ourselves from one another.
The problem is the rules haven’t changed since, as if we still live in a world of fear and that getting close to another individual could lead to something drastic.
Everything now, in terms of media interactions with WVU coaches and players, comes in the form of a press conference or a Zoom call, where no one lets their guard down and no one really gets to let anyone else know who they really are or what they are really feeling.
It wasn’t always like that. Back in the day, media members could actually make requests of which athletes they would like to talk to. They could actually talk to them, too, as in one-on-one. This is me and what I’m seeing and this is you and what you’re feeling.
Those days are, sadly, long gone. In its place is WVU officials (in football, the head coach also has his say) in which athletes get to speak to the media.
That, in itself, is a stake that is being driven between the media and media relations, a constant battle being fought that the media is putting out information other than what the schools simply want put out.
Is that entirely WVU’s fault? No. I’m sure WVU officials will say they are simply following guidance set forth by the NCAA or the Big 12. That guidance is the problem. We no longer live in a world where it’s necessary.
But that doesn’t excuse what happened Wednesday night.
Those players had earned the right to tell their story and share their emotions.
They were cut off and WVU made it look like it simply did not care that it muzzled them to begin with.
That’s a big problem.
