West Virginia to Face Louisville in Semifinals of the Battle 4 Atlantis on Thanksgiving Day

A big win for the Mountaineers punches their ticket to the semifinal round.

Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images

Coming into the Battle 4 Atlantis, West Virginia head coach Darian DeVries wanted to see his team play competitive basketball and "get a couple of wins" before leaving the Bahamas. As confident as he is in his guys, I'm not sure even he expected a win over the No. 3 Gonzaga Bulldogs.

WVU fought tooth and nail for forty minutes and then took the game over in overtime, going on to pull off the upset, 86-78.

"I love this group. From June to now, they continue to buy in. They've been hungry. They want to win," DeVries said in his postgame interview with ESPN. "Every single day, they come in and give us all they got. They want to learn; they want to get better. Like I told them, we're not going to be a finished product in November. This takes time when you've got this many new guys together. We've got to learn how to play together, win together, and sometimes even learn how to lose together. I just loved the way they came out and competed and fought, even at times when I thought the momentum got shifted to Gonzaga. I thought we stayed composed and made some really big, tough winning plays down the stretch."

West Virginia will now play the Louisville Cardinals tomorrow at 12 p.m. EST for the right to go to the championship game. Louisville pulled off a big-time upset of their own earlier in the day, knocking off 14th-ranked Indiana 89-61.

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