Mountaineer Men and Women Pull Off Rare Feat Last Weekend

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia University men's and women's basketball team pulled off the rarest of feats last weekend.

One day after the Mountaineer men's team knocked off 22nd-ranked Kansas 86-75 at Hope Coliseum on Saturday afternoon, prompting some eye-catching comments from Kansas coach Bill Self, the Mountaineer women defeated 11th-ranked Iowa State 83-70 in Ames, Iowa.

That's two double-digit victories over nationally ranked teams within a span of 24 hours!

The astute and sports-minded West Virginia University president Michael T. Benson made a post Sunday afternoon asking when the last time the men's and women's teams defeated ranked opponents on the same weekend by double digits.

His question eventually made its way to me through Mountaineer fan Clay Wilcox and now comes the answer.

Only once prior.

It happened back in 2017 when the men's team defeated 24th-ranked Iowa State 87-76 in the Coliseum on March 3, one day before the women blew out 19th-ranked Oklahoma 82-58 in the Big 12 women's tournament in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

This information was provided by Mark DeVault, whose website WVUstats.com is the one everybody uses for West Virginia University football, basketball, baseball and soccer statistical research - even if they don't cite it in this cut-and-paste era of sports journalism.

Mark used to work on the West Virginia University basketball and football stat crews and married an interest in statistics with his knowledge of computer programming to produce an invaluable historical resource.

Then, like all good researchers, he got lost in microfilm in the WVU Library looking up old box scores going all the way back to the turn of the last century. Years later, after Mark uncovered many errors, omissions and inaccuracies, I picked up where he left off to fill in the gaps.

That's why West Virginia sports researchers can look up football box scores and game stats from the 1940s, 1930s and 1920s, which were culled and tabulated from play-by-play accounts published in newspapers, and it is how difficult-to-find answers to questions like the one President Benson asked yesterday can be addressed so quickly.

As a postscript to President Benson's posting, Mark further pointed out that there have only been four other instances when the men and women have defeated nationally ranked teams by double-digit margins in the same week.

In addition to the two victories last weekend, here are the others:

* Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017, WVU's women defeated No. 20 Oklahoma 83-73, two days before the men routed top-ranked Baylor 89-68 on Jan. 10, 2017.

* Friday, March 3, 2017, the men defeated No. 24 Iowa State 87-76 three days before the women knocked off second-ranked Baylor 77-66 on Monday, March 6, 2017.

* Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, the men beat 18th-ranked Oklahoma 86-65 four days prior to the women defeating 21st-ranked Oklahoma State 61-49.

* Monday, Feb. 22, 2016, the men topped 17th-ranked Iowa State 97-87 five days before the women blew out 22nd-ranked Oklahoma State 82-48 that weekend.

The men and women have an opportunity to duplicate the feat this week. The men will be in Houston on Tuesday night to face seventh-ranked Houston, while the women will be in Hope Coliseum to take on 13th-ranked TCU on Wednesday night.

Click here to read article