Mar 16, 2023 5 min read

They say baseball is a game of inches and it well may be, but there’s no one that isn’t convinced West Virginia basketball is just as excruciatingly a game of inches after an inch here, an inch there brought the Mountaineers’ season to screeching halt.

All year they have climbed Heartbreak Hill, and it was no different Thursday when they reached the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. A No. 9 seed,West Virginia lost to eighth-seeded Maryland, 67-65, in Birmingham, Ala., to put a wrap on a 19-15 season.

It was a year born of high hope and that included a quick non-conference start, but it ended with the final game mirroring the frustrations that came all season.

It came down to the final minute and was decided when not-so-instant replay couldn’t help the officials get it right and when senior point guard Kedrian Johnson, playing not only the best game of the year but the best game of his career, saw his 28-foot 3-point shot at the buzzer fall an inch short.

Johnson finished with 27 points, including a run of 10 straight that let the Mountaineers overcome a 7-point deficit when Maryland was threatening to put the game out of reach.

It was 1-on-5 basketball and Johnson just simply dominated.

“I saw opportunities,” he said later. “Most teams play my drives, so I just step back and shoot the ball. When I had the opportunity to drive, I took it to the basket, got fouled, and finished it.”

But you can’t go 1-on-5 forever.

He eventually needed help and the two other seniors who had helped carry WVU down the stretch – Erik Stevenson and Emmitt Matthews Jr. – failed to provide it. Maryland’s defense hawked Stevenson so badly that he made only 4 of 17 shots and finished with 9 points while Matthews made only one basket in three shots and spent much of the second half on the bench with a shoulder injury.

But you can’t point fingers at those two for this was a game that went back and forth, up and down.

As they have all season, WVU got off to a big lead in the first half, up by 13 at 19-6 when Joe Toussaint hit his second straight three-pointer. But Johnson had to go to the bench with two fouls and Maryland roared back, taking a 32-30 lead into halftime.

In the second half it was Maryland who sprinted out to a seven-point lead before Johnson went crazy. A three-pointer by Johnson put the Mountaineers up by nine with 13:20 to play.

But Jimmy Bell got into foul trouble, which freed Maryland big man Julian Reese to score 17 points and grab nine rebounds.

“We were a little careless with the ball and they made shots,” WVU coach Bob Huggins said. “They made shots. They started backing us in. We didn’t match up very well with them when they started backing us in. It wasn’t a good matchup for us.”

WVU again came roaring back with Johnson doing most of the damage and getting help this time from Tre Mitchell, the only other Mountaineer in double figures with 13 points.

As the clock ticked to a minute Maryland held a 66-63 lead when the basketball was knocked from Jahmir Young’s hands as he tried to pass by Johnson, and the ball whizzed past another Terrapin and went out of bounds.

The ball was awarded to Maryland, but WVU pushed for a replay.

It was a key moment in the game, maybe even the turning point, for WVU was in the midst of a rush toward the lead. They had that indefinable thing known as momentum but the officials decided to go to the replay.

They looked and they looked. They looked at this angle and that angle. They did everything but ask them to replay it as it was played.

One thing was certain as you saw it … it was close but most observers, including the CBS announcing crew, thought the ball went out of bounds untouched and should have gone to WVU.

After more than five minutes, they scratched their heads, and came away unsure what had happened. Since the original call was in Maryland’s favor, the easy way out was to say there was no “irrefutable evidence” to overturn the call and it remained Maryland’s ball.

WVU did eventually force a turnover and Mitchell hit a layup to make it a one-point game with 8 seconds left..

Mitchell fouled Young with 4 seconds left and Young made the first but not the second free throw. WVU got the rebound, passed the ball ahead to Johnson on the run and he threw up the shot that came up just short.

“Four seconds to go,” said Huggins. “Four seconds. I wanted him to get it on the run, which he did. I wanted him to get it on the run to where he could get as close as he can get. It’s four seconds. You can’t look at a clock. You can’t look at a clock to see how much time’s left. He shot it before the time expired, which was a great effort on his part. I mean, missed by an inch. What are you going to do?”