COMMENTARY
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — When more than 22,000 fans gave hyper-orange, full-throated, rocky-toppin’ life to Thompson-Boling Arena on Saturday, they became the largest crowd to eye-witness a West Virginia basketball game in seven years.
At one juncture, it seemed like seven years since West Virginia had scored.
In actuality, that drought lasted 9 minutes, 31 seconds between points, a gap during which the No. 1 Volunteers snatched any notion of an upset, wrapped it in cement shoes and dunked it in the nearby Tennessee River.
However, before that elongated stretch of offensive futility — and admittedly, we’re trying to accentuate the positive here — West Virginia achieved the tiniest of moral victories: Becoming the first team all season to lead Tennessee by double-digits.