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MORGANTOWN -- Erik Stevenson's game-winning 3-point shot had just gone down to put a nightmarish finish to the Dubois Dream's upset bid to an end and move Best Virginia into a 7 p.m. Thursday night scuffle with a fine Herd That team.
The shot got Best Virginia to the 70 points required in the Elam Ending (the particulars of which you will have to go elsewhere to find, but suffice it to say it exists only as baseball's extra-inning, runner-at-second-base rule does) as they escaped with a 70-68 victory in the TBT.
As Stevenson danced along the sideline with his fellow teammates, most of whom represented the recent history of West Virginia University basketball, he glanced up into the stands and pointed toward a familiar face.
The face belonged to a big man, who with his wife, a daughter and a close friend from Wheeling, whose Wesbanco Arena hosted the event, had been there throughout expressing a rooting interest in Stevenson's team as if it were his own.
And, in many ways, it was.
Certainly, he and his family deserved better seats for the game. While not sitting next to Bob Uecker, he was hardly in the "frrrrront rooooow", as Uecker would have put it, but in a way it gave him a certain amount of necessary anonymity.
Not that Bob Huggins needs anonymity or ever will enjoy it.
This was, in a way, his coming-out party, sort of his first public appearance since his DUI arrest in Pittsburgh, his announced "resignation", which he since has disputed, and a stint in rehab to begin the long road back to regaining the Hall of Fame aura he had before a heat was turned up so high on him that the residents in Las Vegas, Arizona and Death Valley would have considered it far beyond what they have been going through so far this summer.
He certainly didn't dress out of character for the event. T-shirt, one with a Flying WV logo adorning it and blue jeans. He looked much healthier than he had when last seen and it appeared that he even had shed some weight.
In some ways it was as if he were turning back the clock to maybe the day after he had been inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, happy with himself and with the world.
There was no gala entry, as had become the custom to his coaching entries in the Coliseum back home, no PA announcement of his courtside arrival or wave to the adoring, cheering masses who were filling the arena on a regular basis.
But there was no evident hostility and his interaction with fans was as it always had been. He was approachable, would chat with those wanting to chat, posed for who knows how many pictures that found their way on to social media.
A request from a reporter to talk was met with what seemed to be a polite, yet definite, no, which is understandable since his situation remains unresolved and he has said all he can say through his attorney.
West Virginians are, by nature, forgiving people, unless you happen to be wearing a Pitt T-shirt, and there certainly is a strong faction of the public who believe he should get his job back.
The fact that Josh Eilert was hired as an interim coach for this year certainly leaves the door ajar for that, should he be able to make his case to get back onto the court in the courts or should the school decide that they believe he is totally rehabilitated and deserved to have his job back.
Certainly, three months ago, he was of such stature as a former player, alumni, fund raiser, backer of cancer research and the driving force behind having a regional cancer center built as part of the WVU hospital complex that his transgressions did not qualify for the death penalty as far as his coaching career is concerned.
It's a complex, emotional issue, one in which he has hurt a segment of our society, one in which he had to battle what would appear to be an alcohol problem, but he is basically a good person, the kind of person Stevenson and so many other teammates felt changed their lives for the better.
"People say what they want, but that's my guy," Stevenson said of Huggins after the game. "I love him to death. He changed my life. It was great to see him up there."
Make no doubt that Kevin Jones, Kedrian Johnson, Sean McNeil, Nate Adrian, John Flowers and the other members of West Virginia would concur.
So, too, would most of those sitting in the stands, but, as noted, this is a complex issue that must not only be negotiated and litigated but, to some, fumigated.
This return to the spotlight was a necessary first step, but little more than dipping the big toe in the ocean before deciding whether to go and swim against the tide or simply relax on the beach.