[ad_1]
Shorthanded West Virginia went on the road and won in the most hostile atmosphere in the Big 12 Tuesday afternoon, taking down No. 7 Kansas 62-61 in a stunner inside Phog Allen Fieldhouse to open conference play. The Mountaineers, who were previously 0-11 vs. Kansas in Lawrence, led wire-to-wire as 13.5-point underdogs playing without second- and third-leading scorers Tucker DeVries and Amani Hansberry, who are both dealing with injuries.
The loss for Kansas snaps a streak of 33 consecutive wins in conference openers dating back to the 1991-92 season, with its last loss in a conference opener taking place Jan. 8, 1991, in an 88-82 loss at Oklahoma to open Big 8 play that season.
KU entered the game dominating the series with wins over West Virginia in six of its last seven meetings and 11 of the last 13.
Making West Virginia’s mountain of a win more momentous is the adversity it faced to do so. Not only did DeVries and Hansberry not play, but the WVU team plane blew out its tires Monday, according to Jeff Goodman, which prompted a midnight departure and an arrival in Lawrence early Tuesday morning roughly 12 hours before the 1 p.m. tip.
We were supposed to leave at 4 and get here at 5:30, we ended up pulling into the hotel at 2:15, 2:30 in the morning,” DeVries said. “I told the guys that injuries, flight delays — they aren’t things you can control. So figure it out, find a way to put that stuff behind you. They did a good job with that. But we’re going to need some sleep tonight.”
Kansas (9-3, 0-1) trailed by as many as 18 points before clawing all the way back to tie the game in the final 15 seconds. But West Virginia (10-2, 1-0) had an answer for every KU run all day and that was true of the final sequence, too, as Javon Small delivered the dagger after draining the second of two free throws with 1.8 seconds remaining to seal it.
Here are three takeaways from the Mountaineers’ win vs/ the Jayhawks:
Big win for Darian DeVries
In his first season coaching the Mountaineers after being hired away last offseason from Drake, DeVries has quietly put together a stellar resume for him and his first team in Morgantown that includes wins over Gonzaga, Arizona, Georgetown and now Kansas. Two of those — Gonzaga and Arizona — came in OT in the Bahamas. But this was arguably the most impressive of them all, with WVU never trailing and winning even with two of its best players sidelined.
KU fires bricks at home
Kansas missed 12 of its 16 3-point attempts on the day and shot just 38.8% from the field in a loss fueled by the inability to make shots on one end of the floor and the inability to stop them on the other. West Virginia similarly struggled, finishing 26 of 60 from the floor and 6 of 20 from 3-point range, but it finished with 11 more shot attempts than KU by consistently stressing the Jayhawks’ defense and not leaving with empty possessions. It’s the 13th time since 2022-23 KU has shot 39% or worse from the field in a game — 12 of which have ended in losses — and second time this season after shooting a woeful 35.7% from the field in a loss at Creighton on Dec. 4.
Small comes up big
West Virginia won as a team with four players scoring eight or more and Joseph Yesufu and Toby Okani added six and seven points, respectively, but no one was bigger late than Small. Small accounted for nine of the team’s 29 second-half points after a slow start, with seven of those points coming in the game’s final five minutes.
[ad_2]
Source link