West Virginia wears the Crown well
Steve Carp
Host · Writer
LAS VEGAS — The smallest man on the court delivered the biggest performance Sunday at T-Mobile Arena.
Honor Huff, who stands 5-foot-10 and grew up playing basketball at Tillary Park in Brooklyn, where reputations are earned amid hard-fought battles, showed how good and tough he was, scoring 38 points and leading West Virginia to the College Basketball Crown title with an 89-82 overtime win over Oklahoma.
“It was a game with lots of ebbs and flows,” West Virginia coach Ross Hodge said. “We knew they were going to answer but this group has shown the ability to make big plays and get stops.”
The Mountaineers, who finished 21-14, earned $300,000 for their NIL collective. You can bet the money will be put to good use by Ross Hodge as the transfer portal opens Tuesday and it will be a frenetic 14 days as thousands of players seek new environs while chasing after a big payday.
Let’s not forget that while the Crown is a basketball tournament, it’s also a business proposition. Despite losing Sunday, Oklahoma received $100,000. The money matters.
But winning also matters. Only three teams will be able to say they were champions — West Virginia with the Crown, the winner of the NIT final between Tulsa and Auburn and, of course, Monday’s NCAA championship game between Connecticut and Michigan.
It gives Hodge and his staff momentum as it prepares to reconfigure the West Virginia roster as seven seniors will be departing.
“Nothing bad comes from winning,” Hodge said. “You get to win the last game of the year, it’s special.”
Think the portal isn’t important? West Virginia won Sunday with a roster that included two players from North Texas, one from Chattanooga, one from St. Bonaventure, a player from Troy, a guy from Weber State by way of Japan, a transfer from South Carolina via Finland, one from North Dakota and one from UNC Wilmington. That what happens these days. You re-tool your roster and hope it comes together.
For a while, it looked as though Huff was going to singlehandedly carry West Virginia to the title. The guard in the turquoise sneakers who grew up in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and later Canarsie before going to prep school in Pennsylvania and first Virginia Military Institute before Chattanooga made his first five 3-point attempts as the Mountaineers opened up a 26-11 lead. That wasn’t surprising given Huff had led the nation with 131 treys while playing at Chattanooga a year ago before transferring to Morgantown.
But Huff cooled off as did his teammates. Suddenly Oklahoma was chipping away and turned the tables on West Virginia, using a 24-4 run to take a 36-30 lead with 2:21 left in the first half. The Sooners were still in front at the halftime buzzer, 41-37.
What happened? Oklahoma (21-16) has six seniors on its roster. It doesn’t rattle easy. And what was ironic was West Virginia’s roster has seven seniors, yet the Mountaineers found themselves struggling late in the half. No doubt Porter Moser reminded his guys that it’s a long game and as long as they didn’t lose contact with West Virginia, they were still in it.
“I think both teams battled their tails off,” Moser said. “There were a lot of guys who didn’t want their career to end.”
Oklahoma extended the advantage to 54-42 four-plus minutes into the second half. And while West Virginia made a run to tie things at 71 with 1:45 remaining, Huff got hot again and he hit from outside and from the foul line as West Virginia forced OT at 76-76. The Mountaineers with their seven seniors on their roster showed some poise themselves in coming back.
Huff had 31 points in 39 minutes of regulation. He added a corner 3 that tied it 82-82 with 2:14 left in OT, then drained a couple of free throws late as the Mountaineers finished what they started Sunday.
“Some of the shots Huff hit, you’ve got to tip your hat to him,” Moser said.
Huff said he never stopped believing that the next shot he took would drop.
“It’s not me,” he said. ”It’s these guys telling me to shoot it. They have the utmost confidence in me.”
It was a wild 45 minutes and for FOX Sports, which was looking to generate some late-season college hoops programming, it got what it was hoping for. The Crown downsized itself from 16 teams in 2025 to just eight this year, but it worked out fine.
Just ask West Virginia.
