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West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins stood back after slapping hands with fans and watched his team cut down the nets.
The emotional, teary-eyed Huggins poured his heart to the cameras after hugging senior Da’Sean Butler, who had just scored the game-winning shot against Georgetown to win the school’s first Big East Conference title.
Behind the basket where Butler just sunk the shot to record the 60-58 win, junior forward Cam Thoroughman ran over to his mom and hugged her as the tears streamed down her face.
In front of the hoop, Butler stood on a ladder and cut the final piece of string off the net. He grabbed the remaining net and put it over his head as to say, "this is ours."
Junior John Flowers picked up a pair of pom-poms, just a night after dancing a jig toward Notre Dame fans, and cheered under a sign saying "2010 CHAMPION" held up by senior Wellington Smith.
Assistant head coach Billy Hahn met up with Mountaineer Sports Network crew Tony Caridi and Jay Jacobs for a post-game interview.
When Hahn reached Jacobs, the assistant gave the color commentator a big hug.
While all that was happening at Madison Square Garden, it was just as spirited in Morgantown. When the couches burn, you know something historic happened.
Historic it was.
In the words of Caridi, it was a great night to be a Mountaineer wherever you may have been, whether it was standing in the general admission seats at the World’s Most Famous Arena or in Sunnyside with a match and lighter fluid in hand.
It was an emotional 20-minute celebration on the court.
And it wasn’t just the players like sophomore Devin Ebanks with tears in their eyes. Some media members stood teary-eyed. Some slapped hands.
Every WVU fan in attendance who had just blown the Georgetown contingent of fans out of the water did the same.
It was something no one from the state of West Virginia had ever seen – a Big East Championship in men’s basketball.
Now, Mountaineers all across the country can finally say they have one, all thanks to Huggins’ gang.
It was a different type of victory, though.
The entire team wanted to win it not only for themselves but for the state.
In no other state does a team mean more. In West Virginia, there is coal, and there is Mountaineer athletics.
Everything else is secondary.
A New York media member asked Butler after the game what it meant to win the championship here in the Garden.
All week, the Big Apple media liked to call WVU the Metro’neers because of their five starters from the New York area.
But those New Yorkers are Mountaineers now.
Just ask Butler.
"We wanted to win this for the state first," he said. "The people there love us so much, and they support us so much. I definitely know it means the world to them."
This win is up there among greatest victories in school history – especially in recent history. Outside of the Mountaineers’ Sweet 16 victory over Wake Forest in 2005 and the WVU football team’s victories in the 2006 Sugar Bowl or the 2008 Fiesta Bowl, there is no greater victory.
It’s obviously the biggest victory in Huggins’ three-year tenure in Morgantown.
In a state like West Virginia, a conference title can boost the state’s economy, can give credibility to the University and can bump the basketball program up another notch.
It definitely did all of that.
Few outside of West Virginia truly understand the significance of the victory.
However, the Mountaineer Nation knows.
Huggins told his team after the victory over Georgetown when it wins the National Championship, it’s going to jump on a tour bus and take the trophy around to every town in West Virginia to share it with the fans.
That would be truly unforgettable.
Kind of like Saturday night.
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