KANSAS CITY, Mo. - West Virginia is in prime time Thursday night, playing a quarterfinal game in an event that crowns a champion in the toughest college basketball league in the country. This is still not the Big East tournament - the old one, not the tawdry new one - and the Sprint Center is not Madison Square Garden, but this is better than WVU's basketball beginnings in this conference three years ago.
The Mountaineers were bounced out on the first day of the 2013 tournament on one last mistake, a failure to box out on a desperate Texas Tech shot, which led to a tip-in and the final loss in a 13-19 season. A local newspaper the next day squeezed a blurb into the sports section about the University of West Virginia, and the way the Mountaineers were treated on the back pages of the New York City tabloids never felt so far away.
A lot has changed, though, and WVU begins its postseason in a 7 p.m. game as the No. 2 seed, revered as a team that could win three games in the next three days and, who knows, maybe get a No. 1 seed when the NCAA tournament brackets are unveiled Sunday.
The Mountaineers have a five-year losing streak in conference tournaments. They're winless since beating Georgetown for the 2010 Big East title, and if it's going to happen here this week, you're going to reference and remember another moment at Madison Square Garden that symbolizes WVU's growth in this league and within this season.
It was Dec. 8, and WVU's Jevon Carter, just eight games into his first full season as a point guard, was about to get a long rest. The Mountaineers were playing Virginia, then the 10th-ranked team in the country, in the Jimmy V Classic. WVU's 12-point lead in the first half had thinned to a single point in the second half, but Carter stole the ball off the dribbler and darted toward his basket.
He then, for some reason, tried to whip a pass around his back to Jon Holton, a showy move that crashed off Broadway. It was a needless turnover that preceded a Virginia 3-pointer, and the Cavaliers led the rest of the way and won by 16 points. WVU coach Bob Huggins called timeout, and Carter sat for the final 13 minutes, 2 seconds.
"I let that go a long time ago," Carter said, still brimming with confidence after the Mountaineers went on the road Saturday and won by 11 points at Baylor, the day Carter took the shovel and patted the loose dirt atop that one poor play.
He finished with eight points and matched a career high with eight assists, both of those performances this season coming against the hospitable Bears. Carter took just one 3-pointer, and though he missed, it wasn't followed by any other attempts. That is not insignificant for someone shooting 28.7 percent for the season from 3-point range and averaging four attempts per game. It was his most cautious and constructive performance yet, and he underlined that with no turnovers in 33 minutes.
"It's probably the best game I've played since I've been at the point guard position," Carter said.
There aren't many other options, and that's not a knock against Carter's resume. It's just that he's quite new to the position. He started all 31 games in the regular season after relieving Juwan Staten for the final three games of the regular season last year and an unremarkable loss to Baylor in the conference tournament.
Before that, he'd come off the bench and played the other guard's position. His job was to shoot and score. Now he's in charge of everything that goes on when the Mountaineers have the ball.
"I think I've had a lot of ups and downs, but I'm just trying to be more consistent playing the point," he said. "I feel like I'm getting better at it."
In WVU's four-game winning streak, the best entering a conference tournament since the 1996-97 season, Carter is 8 for 22 from the floor, but 3 for 6 in each of the past two games. He has 17 assists and six turnovers and two games without a miscue. WVU's averaged 81.5 points and twice reached the 90s.
"He was used to scoring the ball," Huggins said. "Those guys worry about where they're supposed to be and what they're supposed to do and about reading screens and those kind of things. When you've got the ball and you're handling it all the time, you worry about where everybody is.
"You can't run a set if you have somebody in the wrong place. You can't run a set if you've got somebody on the wrong side of the floor. Those guys are in charge of not only knowing what they're supposed to do but what everyone on the floor is supposed to do."
In the second half against Baylor, the Mountaineers were trying to pull away and Carter was outside the 3-point line, dribbling with his back to the basket. He spun left, shook his defender and then moved into the paint. A second defender read Carter's mind, stepped from the left side of the floor toward the right side of the rim and left Carter's teammate, Holton, uncovered.
Holton cut through the open space, and Carter knew what to do. He hooked a pass over his head, as opposed to behind his back, and Holton caught it and dunked in one smooth movement. The Mountaineers took an 11-point lead, and they're just about unbeatable when they lead by double digits this season with a 22-1 record in such games.
"I just play," Carter said, "and I live with the results."