NCAA Basketball: West Virginia at Kansas
USATSI

Shorthanded West Virginia went on the road and won in the most hostile atmosphere in the Big 12 Tuesday afternoon, taking down No. 7 Kansas 62-61 in a stunner inside Phog Allen Fieldhouse to open conference play. The Mountaineers, who were previously 0-11 vs. Kansas in Lawrence, led wire-to-wire as 13.5 point underdogs playing without second- and third-leading scorers Tucker DeVries and Amani Hansberry, who are both dealing with injuries.

The loss for Kansas snaps a streak of 33 consecutive wins in conference openers dating back to the 1991-92 season, with its last loss in a conference opener taking place Jan. 8, 1991, in an 88-82 loss at Oklahoma to open Big 8 play that season. 

KU entered the game dominating the series with wins over West Virginia in six of its last seven meetings and 11 of the last 13.

Making West Virginia's mountain of a win more momentous is the adversity it faced to do so. Not only did DeVries and Hansberry not play, but the WVU team plane blew out its tires Monday, according to Jeff Goodman, which prompted a midnight departure and an arrival in Lawrence early Tuesday morning around 2 a.m. local time  for the 1 p.m. tip.

Kansas trailed by as many as 18 points before clawing all the way back to tie the game in the final 15 seconds. But West Virginia had an answer for every KU run all day and that was true of the final sequence, too, as Javon Small delivered the dagger after draining the second of two free throws with 1.8 seconds remaining to seal it.