Well, that’s one way to bring in the new year.
Let’s begin with why what happened in Lawrence Tuesday wasn’t supposed to happen. This was West Virginia’s 12th trip to Allen Fieldhouse. The Mountaineers had lost the first 11.
This was the conference opener for Kansas. The Jayhawks had won 33 in a row, dating back to the elder George Bush administration.
Kansas was 7-0 at home this season. West Virginia’s only true road game had been to Pittsburgh. The Mountaineers lost by 24 points.
West Virginia’s second-leading scorer Tucker DeVries? Couldn’t play. Injured.
West Virginia’s third-leading scorer and top rebounder Amani Hansberry? Out. Bad ankle.
The rankings? Kansas No. 7, West Virginia down in the also-received-votes section.
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The Mountaineers’ flight to Lawrence? Delayed, so they didn’t get in until the wee hours of Tuesday. It was almost 2025 in New Zealand by then.
The team hotel? Lost power Tuesday morning.
The ability to put the ball where inventor of the game and former Kansas coach Dr. James Naismith always intended — right in the ol’ peach basket? Kansas was 22nd in the nation in field goal percentage. West Virginia was 231st.
Yep, sounded like it should be Jayhawks all the way. But then the game started.
By the 15-minute mark, West Virginia had nine points and Kansas hadn’t scored yet. By halftime, the Mountaineers’ lead was 13. With 18 minutes left, it was 18.
No, the Jayhawks would not be blown away in their own hallowed building. College basketball hasn’t gone that crazy. Kansas finally pulled even at 61-61 with 15 seconds left on a conventional 3-point play by Zeke Mayo. When all else fails against West Virginia, the Jayhawks always have the foul line. In 2018, Kansas beat the Mountaineers 77-69 in Lawrence with a 35-2 gap in free throw attempts. When Mayo hit the free throw to get his team even Tuesday, the scoring differential from the line was 19-3.
Forced into overtime after leading for 38 minutes and 35 seconds would be debilitating and deadly for West Virginia, right? No one will ever know. Javon Small faked Kansas freshman Flory Bidunga into the air and drew a foul with 1.8 seconds left. Small missed the first free throw — might as well squeeze all possible drama out of the moment — but then hit the second. It ended 62-61, the Mountaineers beat the Jayhawks in Allen Fieldhouse with a free throw. A good many West Virginia faithful would appreciate the irony in that.
So Kansas is 0-1 in conference play. The last time that could be said was January of 1991 when the Jayhawks lost to Oklahoma. The league was called the Big Eight then, the winning coach for the Sooners was Billy Tubbs, and the losing coach in only his third season with the Jayhawks was Roy Williams. Current Kansas coach Bill Self was an assistant at Oklahoma State and current West Virginia coach Darian DeVries was in high school and too young to drive. It was the same year the Buffalo Bills took their first Super Bowl loss, Michael Jordan won his first NBA title, the Atlanta Braves played in their first World Series and Mike Krzyzewski became a first-time national champion.
In other words, West Virginia overturned a lot of history Tuesday, no matter how many obstacles were in the way.
“I’m incredibly proud of the guys, especially with the circumstances — the injuries and the travel,” DeVries said. “Like we always talk about, there are no excuses in our program; we are going to line up and go compete.”
The Mountaineers had already proven that at the Battle 4 Atlantis when they played three overtime games in three days, shocking Gonzaga and Arizona and losing to Louisville. This latest turn puts their record at 10-2. Now would be a good time to mention West Virginia was 9-23 last season, so the Mountaineers topped that win total before the ball dropped in Times Square.
Self and the Jayhawks could ponder several malfunctions. The team that normally shoots so well hit only 38.8 percent. Take away Mayo, Hunter Dickinson and Dajuan Harris Jr. and the rest of the Kansas team provided only 11 points. Self is still trying to find the right pieces to fit around his stars. The defense never rattled West Virginia, forcing only six turnovers and blocking no shots. The offense had only 10 assists. It all left the Jayhawks 9-3, which is hardly awful, but Kansas hasn’t started that slowly since 2013-14. And this makes three losses in the past five games.
SOON: Questions that need answering as 2025, and conference play, enter the fold
Bottom line in Lawrence: A lousy way to send out 2024.
“Well, I doubt there’ll be people at 11:59 doing any countdowns tonight,” Self said. “So yeah, we’re down. We’ll bounce back, but we’re down. And certainly the league’s a monster and in order to play this league, you need to hold serve at home and we obviously didn’t accomplish that. So we just need to continue to grind and stick together and we’ll get better.
“But, the reality of it is we’re not the team that I think a lot of us thought we would be on January 1. We got a good team, but we can obviously be beat, and today, we were by a team that was better than us. They played smart, they controlled tempo. They did a really nice job. And we got to understand something — every game in our league will be similar to that. It’ll be a rock fight.”
Also every so often, maybe the gods of basketball just look at what is supposed to on happen paper and turn the game upside down. They like to have their fun on New Year’s Eve, too.
