TAMPA, Fla. - Joe Mazzulla is already starting to sound like the coach he hopes to be one day now that his playing days are behind him.
TAMPA, Fla. - Joe Mazzulla is already starting to sound like the coach he hopes to be one day now that his playing days are behind him.
Take Saturday afternoon, for instance. His career had come to an abrupt end with a 71-63 loss to Kentucky in the NCAA tournament. He didn't have the best game of his 145-game West Virginia career (second only to Da'Sean Butler's 146), although he did score a career-high 20 points.
But Mazzulla managed to take it all in stride.
"It's tough, especially when you hear that final buzzer and you know it's over,'' he said. "But we had a great run, and it's easier to get over [the end] when you know you gave your all.''
Therein rests probably what this edition of the Mountaineers should be remembered for - giving it their all.
Let's face it, when the final buzzer sounded a year ago it was in Indianapolis at the school's first Final Four appearance in 51 years. That night, after a loss to eventual national champion Duke, Butler, Devin Ebanks and Wellington Smith said goodbye to college basketball.
That a team that lost those three and added absolutely no one still managed to not only make it back to the tournament but also win a game and compete well for a chance to go to the Sweet 16 is rather remarkable.
Sure, there was hope at the beginning of the season. You could look at this team and, perhaps with a bit of cockeyed optimism, think that it could be pretty good. Maybe it would be a dominant inside team with Deniz Kilicli and Dan Jennings. It might have better ball handling with Mazzulla and Truck Bryant both healthy and playing together. Perhaps the shooting would be better if Casey Mitchell came through. Kevin Jones had already proven his worth.
Almost none of that panned out, though.
Jennings was a no-show after midseason and Kilicli had only a few good games. The ball handling was better, but neither Bryant nor Mazzulla could shoot the ball for most of the season. Mitchell began the season looking like Pete Maravich and then became a role player who was suspended for three games. Jones, without Butler and Ebanks and Smith beside him, wasn't what he was a year earlier.
Yet still this team got as far as perhaps anyone could have imagined, and even further than many thought.
TAMPA, Fla. - Joe Mazzulla is already starting to sound like the coach he hopes to be one day now that his playing days are behind him.
Take Saturday afternoon, for instance. His career had come to an abrupt end with a 71-63 loss to Kentucky in the NCAA tournament. He didn't have the best game of his 145-game West Virginia career (second only to Da'Sean Butler's 146), although he did score a career-high 20 points.
But Mazzulla managed to take it all in stride.
"It's tough, especially when you hear that final buzzer and you know it's over,'' he said. "But we had a great run, and it's easier to get over [the end] when you know you gave your all.''
Therein rests probably what this edition of the Mountaineers should be remembered for - giving it their all.
Let's face it, when the final buzzer sounded a year ago it was in Indianapolis at the school's first Final Four appearance in 51 years. That night, after a loss to eventual national champion Duke, Butler, Devin Ebanks and Wellington Smith said goodbye to college basketball.
That a team that lost those three and added absolutely no one still managed to not only make it back to the tournament but also win a game and compete well for a chance to go to the Sweet 16 is rather remarkable.
Sure, there was hope at the beginning of the season. You could look at this team and, perhaps with a bit of cockeyed optimism, think that it could be pretty good. Maybe it would be a dominant inside team with Deniz Kilicli and Dan Jennings. It might have better ball handling with Mazzulla and Truck Bryant both healthy and playing together. Perhaps the shooting would be better if Casey Mitchell came through. Kevin Jones had already proven his worth.
Almost none of that panned out, though.
Jennings was a no-show after midseason and Kilicli had only a few good games. The ball handling was better, but neither Bryant nor Mazzulla could shoot the ball for most of the season. Mitchell began the season looking like Pete Maravich and then became a role player who was suspended for three games. Jones, without Butler and Ebanks and Smith beside him, wasn't what he was a year earlier.
Yet still this team got as far as perhaps anyone could have imagined, and even further than many thought.
"Yeah, there were probably people who didn't think we'd be in this position at the beginning of the year or in the middle of the year,'' Mazzulla said. "We overcame a lot of adversity.''
Like the entire freshman class washing out. Or Mitchell's suspension and Jennings' defection. There were periods when this team played just awful basketball.
Even when this team was playing its best it was still a struggle. This group didn't out-talent hardly anyone.
"It is good to know that we could come this far,'' said Cam Thoroughman, who pretty much epitomized this team - a largely overmatched competitor who succeeded with grit and determination. "People didn't pick us to be here, and we could have packed it in and gone home when things went bad for us. But we didn't. I'm proud that nobody ever gave up.''
True, this is the team that broke a rather anonymous streak that the program had going. Not since 1989 had the Mountaineers lost a second-round game in the NCAA tournament. (Actually now it's called the third round, but it's still the round of 32.) Of the seven WVU teams that made the event between 1989 and this year, two lost in the first round and the five that didn't all went on to at least the Sweet 16.
OK, there's your oddball stat of the day.
Still, that this team even made the tournament and won one game still seems rather amazing given its makeup. Subtract three of the top four players from any Final Four team and add no one to the mix and see if any of them ever had any sort of success. I'm sure it's happened a few times, but not many.
"This year there were a lot of distractions and we didn't have the names. We didn't have Da'Sean and Devin and we didn't have the glue guy like Wellington,'' Mazzulla said. "But we had a team, and we battled through adversity and we became an even better team.''
Still, even when a team that probably shouldn't have gotten this far actually does, it's hard to accept defeat at any stage. And so it was with this one.
"I would have loved to have been in the Sweet 16,'' Thoroughman said. "Because anything can happen once you get there.''
Reach Dave Hickman at 304-348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.
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