Photo courtesy of BlueGoldNews.com WVU’s Sencire Harris glides in for a layup against Colorado during Big 12 Conference tourney action on Wednesday afternoon.

MORGANTOWN — That feel good story coach Darian DeVries and his West Virginia basketball team were authoring through this season turned into a horror story on Wednesday afternoon in Kansas City as they let a 13-point lead over the No. 16 seed in the Big 12 Tournament, Colorado, run wild in the second half of a 67-60 victory over the Mountaineers.

While many were trying to fit the Cinderella glass slipper on the feet of WVU, it turned into nothing but a hot foot as the Buffaloes proved themselves to be the real Cinderella as the league’s bottom feeders from the regular season with a 13-19 record pulled off its second straight upset of the tournament and sent the Mountaineers home to begin preparations for the NCAA Tournament, should they still get the bid they seemed to have secured after winning their 19th game of the year over UCF.

Only O’Henry could have come up with the twist ending that the story WVU was writing this year put on its Big 12 Tournament as just when they seemed to be in full control of matters, then came down the mountain they had climbed while toppling the likes of No. 2 Iowa State, No. 3 Gonzaga and No. 7 Kansas on the way to a national ranking, as short-lived as that would be.

They never saw what hit them when Javon Small, who has been the swizzle stick that had stirred their drink all season, hit a pair of free throws followed by a 3-point dagger that gave them a 25-12 lead with 8:30 left in the first half.

Small owned 13 points himself at that moment and it seemed he was heading for an even bigger game than the 26-point outburst he had in a victory at Colorado earlier this season.

No one could have guessed that the Mountaineers would score only two more baskets in the first half of that game or that, quite unbelievably, it would take 25 minutes and 47 seconds for Small to score his next field goal, coming with WVU trailing, 56-49 and just 2:43 left to play.

“I don’t know. I got to be more aggressive throughout the whole game,” Small said in the post-game analysis. “Like coach said, they were in the floppy. Had me running around, and then I’m just a natural playmaker, in my opinion, so I just thought I could make the right play. Started dishing the ball off, but, yeah, I just gotta be more aggressive.”

Small took just six second-half shots and four of them were in the final three minutes. He did manage to make two more 3s in desperation to finish with 23 points.

There was no way you could put a luster on what seemed like a decent afternoon of 7 for 15 shooting, with 4 of 11 from 3, 5 of 6 free throws and 5 assists for his disappearance from for more than 25 minutes allowed Colorado to claw its way back into contention, then the lead, then the winner’s circle.

“Heck of a win,” Colorado coach Tad Boyle said. “We just felt like when we were scratching and clawing to get back in the game, whether it was the first half or the second half, especially in the second half, I felt like if we could get it tied or take the lead that they might tighten up a little bit.”

Fittingly, if the man named Small couldn’t get it done, Colorado’s Mr. Big could. The NAIA Player of the Year from last season, Elijah Malone, all 6-foot-11 and 268 pounds took over the game in the second half. Not healthy when the two teams first met, playing just 9 minutes, Malone this time took matters over in the second half, scoring 12 of his 14 points on 6 of 7 shooting.”

“I thought they went to a little more floppy action in the second half and were able to throw it inside,” DeVries said. “They’ve been pretty good all year when you bring a double team kicking it out for open 3s.

“A little bit of foul trouble played a part in it. We weren’t quite as aggressive defensively maybe as we needed to be. We went and brought help. One time we gave out a kick-out 3, so we were kind of in a tough spot in whether to come or not to come. But they did a good job of taking advantage of that.”

At the same time the Buffaloes went from buffoons to boffo as ball handlers. Ranking 353rd in the nation in turnover percentage and having lived up that performance with 7 first-half turnovers, they emerged from the locker room in the second half and protected the basketball as if it were the crown jewels, turning it over just 4 times, which allowed them to shoot 61% through the second period.

“West Virginia, this is a big game for them. It’s a big game for us. It’s tournament basketball. But you shoot 61 percent in the second half against one of the best defenses in the league, that’s, again, a credit to these guys and our offense and our movement,” Boyle said.

They never allowed WVU a hole to creep through to get back in the game over the final 10 minutes.

“I think the biggest thing for us is certainly disappointing with the loss, maybe how it happened,” DeVries said. “But we can’t change that now, so the biggest thing for us is, hey, we’re going to have another opportunity to play and we’re going to get a chance to go back and regroup like we have all year, we’re going to reset.

“We’re going to do and focus on some of the things that we need to clean up from this game, but more importantly, come back and get our minds right and then get ready to go try to make a run.”