MORGANTOWN, West Virginia — The West Virginia Mountaineers walked into Allen Fieldhouse, THE PHOG, in Lawrence, Kansas and upset the #7 ranked Kansas Jayhawks, winning 62-61 in one of the toughest environments in all of college athletics. In addition, the Mountaineers did it without two of its best players – starters Amani Hansberry and Tucker DeVries – and after having major travel complications.
Following the win, the West Virginia locker room was absolutely wild with celebration, and head coach Darian DeVries gave a passionate speech to his team. Here’s what DeVries had to say to players following the huge upset win: “That’s an incredible win because you believed in something nobody else did. They said Stone’s out. They said Tucker’s out. They said Amani’s out. Like I told you before, I don’t care. I don’t care who we put out there because I believe in every single one of you Javon Small may be out next game. Toby Okani may be out, but it doesn’t matter. We’re going to take our five and we’re going to go compete. If it’s not good enough that night, you’re going to have to earn it. You’re going to have to take it from us. But tonight, you took it from them because you stayed together, you stayed within yourselves and you stayed composed.”
Pay heed, the streak is over 🤫 pic.twitter.com/jTR1DC0PNR
— WVU Men's Basketball (@WVUhoops) December 31, 2024
DeVries went on to praise his team’s effort during his post game press conference. “Any time you can get a road win in this league is a big deal,” DeVries said. “Anytime you can come here, it’s an even bigger deal because you feel like you’re one-up on everybody. We told the team there’s really only one team a year that comes here and wins typically. Our mindset was we want to be that team. We told them, ‘This is one game.’ There are 19 more of these left. Enjoy it. You earned a hard-fought victory, but there’s going to be another one coming up on Saturday and another one on Wednesday, but well take the effort, get home, put it away and move on to the next one.”
West Virginia had never beaten Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse and former WVU head coach Bob Huggins was 0-11 there during his time with the Mountaineers. Any way you look at it, this was a huge, historic win for West Virginia. Next up for West Virginia is Saturday, January 4th at home against the Oklahoma State Cowboys. Oklahoma State is currently 8-4 overall and 0-1 in Big 12 Conference play.
