Wednesday’s press conference featured Butler, Ebanks, Jones, WELLS and Mazzulla before Truck Bryant hopped up onto the dais. And everyone chuckled before Truck smiled and sat down.

This will definitely not surprise you, but the Mountaineers seem entirely unfazed and are borderline insulted people think this is what will keep them from … well, from winning it all.

Many of the questions, as you might imagine, were directed to Truck about his foot. Disappointment? Was it the shoes? Will you be back next year? Yada, yada, yada. It was also made abundantly clear the break occurred in practice, which, for some reason, is difficult for people to comprehend. It seemed like a story was being manufactured and that, too, bothered the players.

So for the last time, Truck’s foot was bothering him against Missouri, but so badly that he thought he could change shoes at halftime and go on, which he did. He also did whatever little physical work the team did Monday and then went through treatment. Tuesday he was backpedaling and felt a pop. That’s when the bone broke. He wasn’t playing with a broken foot Sunday and Monday and it shouldn’t be that difficult to grasp that. How that contributes to “inaccurate reports,” I’ll never know. Or care.  

I think WVU knows who will start, but I think they’re being coy. My hunch is Mazzulla gets the start and he was incredulous as to why anyone was making a big deal of it. At one point, he actively messed with an interviewer and said he’d never played in the Sweet Sixteen and doesn’t have starting experience. Neither is true. In a less public moment a while later he said, “I’ve been here like six years. It’s not like they’re throwing a freshman out there.”

The best part was the reappearance of the “Why are you guys having so much fun?”  WVU is having fun answering questions about why it has so much fun. You’d have no idea the Mountaineers were playing a big game with a big injury tomorrow. That’s, at the least, promising, yes?