WVU’s upset over Kansas considered ‘one of the great road triumphs’ in school history
West Virginia’s basketball players and coaches exchanged hugs and high-fives with a group of Mountaineers fans seated behind the visitors bench Tuesday afternoon, seconds after KJ Adams’ last-second shot just outside the paint was partially blocked by Jonathan Powell.
The clock expired in unranked WVU’s shocking 62-61 victory over No. 7 Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse.
Yes, it was a big deal that West Virginia prevailed in the first Big 12 Conference road game of the 2024-25 season and first in the Darian DeVries era. DeVries coached at Drake for six years before taking over for interim Josh Eilert on March 24, 2024.
“Today’s victory will go down as one of the great road triumphs in school annals, possibly approaching West Virginia’s 77-70 win over fifth-ranked Kentucky in Memorial Coliseum on Dec. 20, 1957,” read John Antonik’s account of the game at wvusports.com.
“The late Jerry West, whom West Virginia is honoring this year with a No. 44 patch on its jerseys, was the star player in that game,” Antonik added.
Another scribe who attempted to put the Mountaineers’ victory over KU in perspective was Justin Jackson of dominionpost.com who deemed the result, “one of the program’s all-time historic victories.” It was WVU’s first victory in Allen Fieldhouse in 12 tries.
“With the odds stacked against him, Darian DeVries just pulled off one of those moments that WVU fans will never forget, as in you’ll remember where you were 20, 30 years from now whenever this game is mentioned,” Jackson wrote.
Not only did West Virginia hand KU its first loss in a conference opening game in 34 years, it did so while facing some big-time adversity. Injuries on Tuesday sidelined Tucker DeVries and Amani Hansberry, who average a combined 25.5 points a game for the Mountaineers (10-2).
The shorthanded team, which arrived at its team hotel in Lawrence at 2 a.m. Tuesday because of travel problems on Monday, awakened for breakfast only to learn the power was out at the hotel.
“Our travel day was tough. We were supposed to leave at 4 (p.m. Monday) and get here at 5:30,” DeVries said. “We ended up getting to the hotel at 2:15, 2:30 in the morning.
“Like I told the guys, injuries, flight delays, those aren’t things you can control. Figure it out. Find a way to put that stuff behind you. Focus on what we can control. I thought they did a good job of that but we need to get some sleep tonight.”
The Mountaineers skipped their morning shootaround at Allen, arriving to the arena two hours before the 1 p.m. tip.
“Originally we were going to do a shootaround, but it felt important to get one more hour sleep,” DeVries said in his postgame session with media members, one in which he wore a “No excuses” T-shirt.
He added: “I’m incredibly proud of the guys’ effort, especially with the circumstances with the injuries and the travel.”
Of the significance of the win, WVU’s first-year coach said: “I think any time you can get a road win in this league it’s a big deal. Any time you come here (and win) it’s even a bigger deal because you feel you are one up on everybody. We told the team there’s only one team a year that can come in here and win typically. Our mindset was we want to be that team. We also told them this is one game. There’s 19 of these left. We’ll certainly take the effort, get home, put it away and move onto the next one.”
Antonik’s report on the game addressed the way the contest was called by the officials. Kansas (9-3) hit 19 of 21 free throws to WVU’s 4 of 6.
“Kansas fans, upset with an over-and-back violation that was called late in the game (on an apparent Zeke Mayo save of a Flory Bidunga pass), were conveniently overlooking a 21 to 6 free-throw disparity that was 21 to 2 before the Jayhawks had to start fouling to regain possession of the basketball,” Antonik wrote.
“This was almost reminiscent of a WVU game played here in 2018 when Kansas shot 35 free throws to West Virginia’s two in a 77-69 Jayhawks win.”
KU shot just 38.8% from the floor while outrebounding West Virginia 33-32. KU went an abysmal 4-of-16 from 3. WVU was 6-of-20 from beyond the arc.
Of the free throw situation — it’s possible Adams was fouled on his last-second jumper — Self said to Greg Gurley on the Jayhawk network postgame radio show: “People will talk about the whistle, and you know, it wasn’t a good whistle, but the bottom line is, we had opportunities to win the game without the whistle, and certainly we didn’t take advantage of it.”
There was one other side story from Tuesday’s game. In a battle of possible Big 12 player of the year candidates, WVU’s Javon Small scored 13 points with 11 rebounds and six assists in 40 minutes. KU’s Hunter Dickinson scored 10 points with 12 boards in 33 minutes. Dickinson was 4-of-10 from the field and 2-of-4 from the line.
Small’s free throw with 1.8 left accounted for the margin of victory.
“Dickinson was solid with 10 points and 12 rebounds, but the big 7-foot-2 mountain of a man has now been outplayed down low not once but twice by WVU bigs who aren’t exactly threatening to have their jersey retired,” wrote Jackson of dominionpost.com.
“You may remember last season’s 91-85 upset (over KU) in Morgantown, a game in which Pat Suemnick had 20 points and six rebounds. This time around, it was journeyman Eduardo Andre — his career path has gone from Nebraska to Fresno State and now to WVU — who had the bigger impact with 15 points and six rebounds. Andre absolutely dominated the early stages of the game off pick-and-roll plays with Small, as the WVU point guard continued to thread the needle with passes that Andre turned into dunks,” Jackson added.
Of Small, DeVries said: “We did a lot of different stuff with Javon that we’ve been working on for a while. We had to get him on the move a little bit more, and then we did some new things with some double ball screens. Now, their help guys were a little bit out of position and weren’t sure what to do.”
This story was originally published January 1, 2025 at 7:45 AM with the headline "WVU’s upset over Kansas considered ‘one of the great road triumphs’ in school history."
