College Basketball Crown: West Virginia’s Run Could Be a Springboard for What’s Next

LAS VEGAS — How drastically can the complexion of an entire season change in 64 seconds? For West Virginia, which arrived at this year’s College Basketball Crown with an overall record of just 18-14 and failed to win consecutive games since the third week in January, so much about the debut campaign for head coach Ross Hodge hinged on the answer to that question. His team trailed Stanford by six in the waning moments of an opening-round game at MGM Grand Garden Arena, the loser going home for good. The Mountaineers needed a frantic comeback. Layups by forwards DJ Thomas and Brenen Lorient gave way to three clutch free throws from guard Honor Huff with three seconds remaining to force overtime. From there, West Virginia staved off the Cardinal for an 82-77 victory that was equal parts thrilling and unexpected. Three days later — following additional wins over Creighton and tournament-favorite Oklahoma — the Mountaineers could call themselves deserving champions. They’d seen their season nearly fade to black before roaring back to cut down the nets at T-Mobile Arena. “Just to be able to will it out and win,” Huff told me two days after the College Basketball Crown ended, “I think that was just a testament to us and our season. Just battling through all the things we had to prevail against to be in a position that we were in. “It’s tough because it could have went a whole other way in that last minute and a half. It really could have went south, and we would have been going home, basically. So to pull that out for our community, each other, I think it was just a great experience and just a testament to our whole season and resilience.” Now, West Virginia’s first year under Hodge includes: surpassing 20 wins for the first time since Bob Huggins was still prowling the sidelines in 2019-20, the program’s first postseason title of any kind since it won the Big East Tournament in 2010 and an incoming recruiting class that finished higher in the national rankings at No. 22 than any group the Mountaineers have signed since 2019. Not too shabby for someone who never held a job of any kind in the power conferences before taking over at West Virginia. This is the type of launching pad the College Basketball Crown can be for teams that are eager to keep playing despite missing the NCAA Tournament, a prospect made more enticing by $500,000 in total NIL prize money — $300,000 to West Virginia as the champion. As players and coaches have repeated ad nauseam here in Las Vegas over the last two years, having the chance to end a season victorious is special. A privilege reserved for winners of March Madness, the College Basketball Crown, the NIT and — in years when the event is actually held — the CBI. Nothing accelerates a program’s momentum and a fan base’s belief quite like lifting a trophy. “We all will remember this forever,” Hodge said in his postgame news conference after beating Oklahoma in the championship game. “It’s not the ultimate goal as a program or a university, but it sets a great standard and expectation moving forward. When we are [eventually] playing in Final Fours and winning national championships, these guys will know that they started it. And they’ll look back on it, and they’ll know they laid the foundation for what is about to come.” Though the College Basketball Crown is still in its infancy after just two iterations, it’s worth noting that there are loose correlations between participants and larger-scale success the following season. Three programs from last year’s original 16-team field jumped from the College Basketball Crown to the NCAA Tournament in Villanova, UCF and inaugural Crown champion Nebraska. “It might not be the NCAA Tournament championship, but it’s a postseason championship. We can still call ourselves champions,” Nebraska forward Juwan Gary said in the postgame news conference following the 2025 title game. After cutting down the nets in Las Vegas last April, the Cornhuskers went on to enjoy the best season in program history, winning 28 games and advancing beyond the first round of the Big Dance for the first time, ultimately reaching the Sweet 16. There was an unlikeliness to Nebraska’s march through the College Basketball Crown that somewhat resembled the Mountaineers’ experience last week. When head coach Fred Hoiberg and the Cornhuskers arrived at MGM Grand Garden Arena to begin what finished as an impressive run of four wins in seven days, they were mired in a string of five consecutive losses. But one victory begat another, and then another, and by the end of the week, even Hoiberg admitted the group had “played some pretty darn good basketball.” “Down the line, the next [bunch of] years, we’re going to come back to Nebraska and people will know who this team was: Crown champions,” Gary said in 2025. “That’s something that will be in my heart for sure.” [CBB CROWN: 4 Takeaways From West Virginia’s Title Game Comeback Win] In a reflection of college basketball’s modern era, when transfers seem to change schools on a whim, only three players who logged minutes in the Cornhuskers’ victory over UCF last April saw the floor in this year’s Sweet 16 appearance: guard Sam Hoiberg, forward Cale Jacobsen and center Burke Buyuktuncel — all of whom averaged more minutes per game in 2025-26 than they did the season before. A similar turnover is likely to occur at West Virginia, where Hodge and his staff must now replenish a roster that featured seven seniors, including all five starters against Oklahoma on Sunday. The Cornhuskers parlayed last year’s postseason uptick into a successful period of player acquisition that included high-level transfers like former Iowa forward Pryce Sandfort and former Rhode Island guard Jamarques Lawrence, two players who finished first and fourth on the team, respectively, in scoring. That is the kind of impact Hodge will search for now that five of his six leading scorers have exhausted their eligibility: Huff, Lorient, Chance Moore, Treysen Eaglestaff, Jasper Floyd and Harlan Obioha. Those players could have ended their collegiate careers with a humbling 20-point loss to BYU in the second round of the Big 12 Tournament, declining all postseason invites and moving forward with whatever comes next, be that in basketball or something else. Instead, they chose to rally around each other, around Hodge and around the Mountaineer fans for the chance to make this season special. Eventually, West Virginia cut down the nets. “To the media’s perspective or to a fan’s perspective, it doesn’t feel the same [as the NCAA Tournament],” Huff told me earlier this week. “But I would say for us, it feels the same because you’re getting to win special games and endure special experiences with the people that you love, you know what I’m saying? I think that is just as important.”