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Things had been going well at West Virginia up until mid-March.
While there were some skeptics about bringing back Rich Rodriguez as the football program's head coach, Rodriguez won a lot of fans back this winter with an openness about his past issues and the passion he showed for his alma matter.
The vibes were even better on the basketball court.
First-year head coach Darian DeVries did the herculean work after taking over last March. He signed 14 new players, overturned the coaching staff and won 19 games, including 10 in Big 12 play, to put the Mountaineers in every major NCAA Tournament bracket projection. He pulled the Mountaineers out of Bob Huggins' shadow.
Then came the bracket reveal on March 16. Sixty-eight teams were named, none of them West Virginia.
That's when the anger and confusion started. The West Virginia governor, standing in front of sign that read "National Corrupt Athletic Association," threatened legal action. To make matters worse, DeVries, less than a year into his tenure, was publicly linked with the open Iowa basketball job. Then came the Indiana rumors.
Forty-eight hours after WVU was snubbed from the NCAA Tournament, DeVries left for Bloomington.
"You go from the highs of everything going well, football and basketball are at least on track, to a NCAA tournament snub at the sake of a UNC and Texas, bigger brands," EerSports' Mike Casazza said. "Then your coach goes to Indiana, a bigger brand. There's always this thing with West Virginia about the worst thing can possibly happen at the most unexpected time. This just kind of feels like that."
Casazza said the West Virginia fan base felt bad for DeVries and the team at first.
West Virginia had clawed to 19-13 overall record, a run that included wins over Gonzaga, Arizona, Kansas and Iowa State. Star player Javon Small, a transfer from Oklahoma State, became a fan favorite and a first-team all-Big 12 selection. The fans rallied around standout guard Tucker Devries – the head coach's son – who averaged 14.9 points per game before suffering a December shoulder injury. The fans were livid when NCAA Tournament committee chair Bubba Cunningham – the AD of fellow bubble team North Carolina – said the committee took Tucker DeVries' injury into account like it's something new and not the fact that the Mountaineers played their entire Big 12 schedule without him.
"It was despair," Casazza said. "They wanted it for a coach who overcame injuries, flipped the roster. They just felt terrible for a guy like Javon Small. It bummed them out. There was sympathy and disappointment because they thought they'd earned it. They thought they had a star coach and star player."
Until that coach, and his son, left for Indiana.
"You had this crazy 180 when people just felt really sad, sympathetic, empathetic, disappointed," Casazza said. "Now it's just anger. It's just like, 'I don't like the dad. I don't like the son. Get them out of here.' So, we've gone from thoughtful, emotional responses to irrational emotional responses."
Fans get to stay angry. But there is some hope for West Virginia moving forward. The Mountaineers are armed with just over $6 million because of the buyout Indiana paid for DeVries. West Virginia can use that to pay bills. It could also use that money, a massive sum in college basketball coaching terms, and go out and poach a high-level, sitting high-major coach. They could also use it to get around a big buyout for another candidate.
You can get an in-depth look at West Virginia's top candidates here, via ErrSports
And it's not as if West Virginia basketball is broken. The Mountaineers have ranked in the year-end AP Top 25 six times since 2014-15. The same infrastructure that helped DeVries turn around the program in short order remains in place.
"It's a pretty good situation he walked away from," Casazza said. "He made it good but whatever he left behind is also what he walked into, so that'll be there for whoever walks in. They have a chance to really fill his shoes here and maybe even go a size bigger, because they can buy somebody out and pay more money because Indiana is footing the bill."
Still, it's a brutal stretch in West Virginia history.
It may not be the lows of 2007, when the Mountaineers' football team went into the 100th Backyard Brawl against Pittsburgh as four-touchdown favorites only to lose 13-9, costing the program a berth in the BCS National Championship. That was followed a few weeks later by Rodriguez leaving for Michigan. An all-time one-two punch for a program's hopes.
But it's still a major blow and a reminder of West Virginia's place in the college athletics landscape when the bluebloods come-a-poaching (or bid-taking).
"That was by far worse than this," Casazza said. "But that's the thing, you think you're so far past that. But then you look around and Rich Rodriguez is back again, and (West Virginia) just lost a coach to a Big Ten school out of nowhere.
"It's not the same, I understand that. But you kind of feel cyclical sometimes."
