Dan Zangrilli’s notebook is littered with one-liners like this, and I will not argue about that. His call, though, is the memorable punctuation mark on West Virginia’s first Big 12 tournament championship and first conference tournament title in 28 years. Mike Carey had a 5 o’clock shadow back then!

This is a huge deal, everybody.

The final score from Oklahoma City, where second-ranked Baylor (playing without its top scorer Darren Collison, er, Kalani Brown) hadn’t lost since the year the WVU men won the Big East tournament, was closer than the 21-point lead WVU had in the fourth quarter. But seriously, up 21 on Baylor!? Now, WVU had played tough against the Bears this season and in past seasons, but this was the third game in three days, and the Mountaineers just don’t have a lot of legs to run out there against the tournament’s top seed … after beating the rest of the tournament’s top three seeds the two days before that. Carey’s distinguished career just secured one of it’s top moments — if not the moment — by finally winning a tournament title after three cracks at it before.

Over the three-day weekend, WVU defeated No. 3-seed/ No. 19-ranked Oklahoma (82-58), No. 2-seed Texas/No. 12/14 Texas (62-59), and top-seeded/No. 2-ranked Baylor on Monday night. The win snapped Baylor’s 20-game win streak in Big 12 Championship games, while WVU joined the 2004 Oklahoma team as the only six seeds to win the Big 12 Championship title.

“They knew coming down here that we had to win at least one, two games; and I told them after the second game, we might as well win the third one since we’re here,” coach Carey said. “And they came out and played extremely hard and continued to play defense the whole time. I look here where Baylor only had nine offensive rebounds, which is pretty good for us, defensively keeping them off the boards. Baylor is a great program. They do a great job. If we’re going to knock somebody off it was an honor for us to knock off Baylor because they’re such a great program. Give all the credit to our players.”

Martin finished with a game-high and Big 12 Tournament title game record 32 points, which included 12-of-15 from the free throw line. Martin banked eight field goals and four triples and dished out four assists, as she was tabbed the Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship’s Most Outstanding Player. Martin’s 32 points were the most in a championship final after surpassing Baylor’s Brittney Griner’s 31 points in 2011 and 2013. The sophomore from Atlanta averaged 27.3 points in the three contests, as WVU moved to 11-1 when she scores 20 or more points.

Teana Muldrow added 15 points and nine rebounds, while blocking two shots. Muldrow also grabbed Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship All-Tournament accolades after averaging 14.7 points and 8.3 rebounds in the three victories.

This team this year was supposed to be good, but ACL tears, which always seem to sneak up on Carey, sneaked up on Carey. Shortened his bench, and he only really used seven players last night, which is not unusual. But let the record show Mike Carey’s bench outscored Kim Mulkey’s bench last night. Weird. Add the other intangibles: Only minus-3 in rebounds, nine fewer turnovers and nine more shots, outscored Baylor by 21 points from 3-point range and six points at the free-throw line. Another sum-of-the-parts team, as Mulkey found out.

Let me quickly tell you, this is but three games and if I can be as happy being an opponent as I can for a guy and a school and a team it would be Mike Carey. He is a hard-nosed, man-to-man coach. I love how he coaches, and I’m happy for him. As disappoint as I am that we didn’t win another tournament championship, I’m just happy for Mike and his team.

Turns out, he needed Tynice Martin most. Fortunately, she was there and she was fantastic. She’s two years into her career, and so far, so good. I do wonder about some records, though. Career scoring average will be tough, but career points scored is certainly within reach.

For three days, she could do almost nothing wrong.

Almost.