MORGANTOWN — Clark Griswold just wanted to get his family to Wally World.
Darian DeVries just wanted to get the WVU men’s basketball team to Lawrence, Kan.
They say life often imitates the movies, right? Except Griswold’s story ended with nearly getting arrested after kidnapping John Candy with a pellet gun and forcing his way into the amusement park.
DeVries’ tale ended in a historic celebration inside Allen Fieldhouse on Tuesday afternoon, following the Mountaineers’ improbable 62-61 victory against No. 7 Kansas.
No kidnapping was required.
Patience, control and discipline, well, all of that was needed.
The team’s original charter plane had to be replaced due to mechanical malfunctions.
By the time WVU arrived in Lawrence, it was 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning. The Mountaineers were supposed to arrive by 5:30 p.m. Monday.
And, of course, the team’s hotel had a power outage.
“Travel day was tough,” DeVries acknowledged. “It was a tough travel day, but like I told the guys, injuries, flight delays — those are things that you can’t control. Figure it out. I thought the guys did a good job of that.”
The question is how? We could expand on this by stating WVU pulled off the upset with two of its best players — Tucker DeVries and Amani Hansberry — out with injuries.
Even if both were completely healthy, the question of how probably still would stand.
WVU fans who had suffered through 11 years worth of frustration, near misses and completely dumbfounding defeats on the road against the Jayhawks understand why “how” was the only worthy question on Tuesday.
Darian DeVries tried to answer that with a shirt. On it read “No excuses,” which he proudly sported in his media conference after the game.
The thing about that is catchy sayings are used for motivation and rallying points in sports all the time.
We’ve seen “Play like your hair’s on fire.” We’ve also seen “Trust the climb.”
They can make for great T-shirts, but not always for great success.
At this point, DeVries is not only a different kind of cat to those who support him around the state, he just may have become West Virginia’s best asset since coal.
No excuses, this one just may have some real staying power.
“What’s happening with this team is it’s growing in confidence,” DeVries said. “Confidence is a very dangerous thing. All of a sudden, you can start to achieve things that no one else thought was possible.
“There were very few people outside of our locker room, considering the injuries and things, that thought we were coming in here and winning today.”
It becomes an us-against-everyone-else type of mentality, which is something West Virginians can relate to very easily.
DeVries has embraced it, lived it and somehow passed it along to a bunch of kids.
“That group in the locker room did believe it,” DeVries continued. “That’s what I love about this group.”
By all accounts, the team had a much better return from Kansas than it did getting there.
Most of the guys probably caught up on some much needed rest, if they didn’t sleep through the whole return trip itself.
It was the type of return trip Clark Griswold could only dream of; no setbacks, no delays and no mayhem.
And no excuses. Point taken.
“My goal for them every single night is after 40 minutes — whether we come out on top or we lose the game — is they got our best shot,” DeVries said. “We’ve got 19 more of these and that’s our goal every single night. Our guys left it out there (against Kansas) and I loved the resiliency they had in an unbelievably tough environment.”
