State rivals forced together as Mountaineers, Herd meet

SAN DIEGO — Hide the couches and cue up some John Denver. More than 2,000 miles away from home, way out on the West Coast with few familiar faces around, West Virginia and Marshall will be forced back together on the basketball court. The venue is the second round of the NCAA Tour- nament. The reward is a spot in the regional semifinals and a date

with top-seeded Villanova. Those are the particulars. But what the game signifies and what it means to the home state of the schools goes far deeper. And yes, the winning school might even cel- ebrate by sacrificing a few couches in celebration come tonight.

“You have to understand our state. Doesn’t matter who we would be playing there’s going to be almost everybody in West Virginia either watching it on TV, listening to it on the radio,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. “That’s our state. We’re so differ- ent. We don’t have professional teams and we really only have two major colleges.”

The game will be watched by basketball fans from Huntington to Morgantown. It features some of

the most important figures in the history of basketball in the state with Huggins on one sideline and Dan D’Antoni on the other as the head coach at Marshall.

But aside from the stakes and the in-state proximity, what makes

this matchup notable is the fact it was the NCAA which created the situation where this was possible. Marshall’s first NCAA Tournament victory upsetting Wichita State in the first round on Friday only rejuvenated the conversation about why the Mountaineers and Thun- dering Herd — the only two Divi- sion I universities in the state — no longer play every season.

“You will have to ask West Virginia about that. I’m not going to go just play at Morgantown, so after that ask West Virginia,” D’Antoni said. “I think it should be played. One time their place, one time our place, one time a neutral place, whatever.

“We’re a Division I school. You’ve got to treat us like one. I would love to play. I’ll needle them a lit- tle bit. I see somebody I can nee- dle, so I’m going to needle them a little bit. We are playing West Vir- ginia University. I coach Marshall University where West Virginians play. We’ll just leave it at that.”

Marshall and West Virginia used to meet yearly. From 1977-2015 it was an annual event in the state. But as West Virginia’s national profile has increased, the Mountaineers no longer believed Marshall was worth their time. Despite pleas from fans and even the brief discussion of state legislative action to mandate the teams play, there appears to be no resolution coming

that would restart the matchup. “I don’t want to get into the reasons,” Huggins said on Friday.