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MORGANTOWN -- On Saturday we flip the page on the calendar to March.
It brings us to madness, March Madness.
Little can sum up the West Virginia basketball situation more than the term, March Madness.
Certainly, back in 1972 the group Climax did not have WVU basketball or March Madness on it's mind when it recorded its hit song, "Prescious and Few", a song whose opening line summed up the Mountaineers' situation best:
"Precious and few are the moments we two can share", they sang.
And so it as the Mountaineers wring out the precious and few moments of their first season under Darian DeVries, the man who brought a new style of basketball and coaching to Morgantown and a new breed of players who have bought in completely to what he was selling.
The regular season is down now to three games; three games that will decide the Mountaineers seeding in the Big 12 Tournament and, almost certainly, whether or not they are given a ticket into the NCAAs.
It isn't an easy closing act for this team that accomplished more than nearly anyone expected and less than any of them felt was possible.
The Big 12, which gave them the most difficult start to their season when it matched them with the perennial conference power Kansas on its legendary home floor in Allen Fieldhouse for their first conference game, then put it on New Year's Eve to make sure -- the league powers felt -- it was the wildest a Kansas crowd could be, is closing the season with another tall challenge.
By now, the shock of the one-point upset WVU sprung on Bill Self and the Jayhawks -- their third victory over a ranked team in the still young season -- has become a relic of the past, a precious-and-few moment to remember and relish -- has slipped to the back burner as their dream of March Madness remains as yet unfulfilled.
The league has sent them on a journey unlike any they have ever taken. Oh, life on the road in college basketball is hard and a few years back the Mountaineers went off to play Texas A&M in Germany, but this is different.
This is a late-season trek from Morgantown to BYU and Utah, a land in which it had never played in crucial games. It's hard enough to transverse time zones and mileage, what with the reset you must put your body clock on, but then they have made Saturday's game at No. 25 BYU have a 10 p.m. start and three days later to start at 9 p.m.
That game will end around 11:30 p.m. In Mountain Standard Time, 2:30 a.m. on their body clock when they take the flight home.
It will not make the season's closing game in Morgantown against a defenseless UCF team -- but one with nothing to lose but a ballgame -- any easier as it faces a challenging obstacle that well could be the deciding game in their NCAA fate.
"We're certainly building up some frequent flier miles," DeVries quipped when he was asked about the latest madness with which they will enter March.
He stressed once again that this is a part of basketball life and that his team would use no excuses.
"Maybe when I was in the Big East and we went out from Nebraska to the East Coast and stayed out for a couple of games I've been through this," DeVries said. "We've done it before. Utah is a good long flight, but get in there the day before so we'll have time to get rested up.
"I don't really look at it as a huge deal. We have young men who are used to traveling and they have been part of things like this before, so we'll just try to keep them as fresh as possible on the practice floor and they will compete as hard as they can."
For a couple of games recently the wear and tear was starting to show on a team that lost a key element a quarter of the way into the season when Tucker DeVries went down for the year and certainly Javon Small, his best player, has to be feeling wear, if not the tear, that comes with leading the Big 12 in minutes played while being the focus of every defense the Mountaineers have faced.
There have been times in the second half of the season when he seemed to be slowing down, but he has bounced back and now, with the most important part of the season ahead he appears to be back to his best.
The two games on this run are intriguing in two regards. With BYU, they are facing a team they lost to at home, 74-71, on Feb. 11. That was a grueling, close game throughout and, a game in which Toby Okani came out of the supporting role he had been playing and displayed all of his skills, scoring 16 points with five rebounds.
He followed that up with 19 points against Baylor and if he can latch back onto whatever he discovered for those games he could be a big factor as they turn for home.
"Everybody brings their own value and I think Toby's value may not always show up on the stat sheet like other guys," DeVries said earlier this season. "He's a big part of what we do. He plays tremendously hard. He's a big part in what we do offensively and defensively, even if people may not realize it."
Now's the time for him to show them his best.