Although the No. 1-ranked West Liberty University men’s basketball team came up one win shy of playing for a national title, the memories still burn bright for the hundreds of Hilltopper fans and alumni that followed the team to Louisville and the thousands more who were glued to their television sets and social media feeds.
In fact, on Facebook alone there was a remarkable reach of nearly 183,000 views!
Here’s a partial list of highlights from another storybook season for the Black and Gold:
- West Liberty led the nation in scoring for the seventh time in the past eight seasons with 3,702 points. No other NCAA team – men or women – scored 3,000 points this year
- The Hilltoppers also led the nation in three other statistical categories and ranked in the Top 10 nationally in six more
- The 34 wins were a school record, eclipsing the 33 wins by West Liberty’s 2011 Final Four team
- The National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) made WLU a unanimous No. 1 pick in their final NCAA Division II Top 25 poll for the second time in the past three seasons
- The Hilltoppers have appeared in 50 consecutive NABC Top 25s dating back to the 2009-10 season and have been ranked No. 4 or higher in the last 25
- West Liberty set an NCAA Division II record for winning percentage (128-9, .934) over a four-year span, falling one win short of the record of 129 wins in four consecutive seasons set from 2000-03 by Winona State, which was hammered, 110-84, by WLU in an Elite Eight quarterfinal
- The Hilltoppers had four 1,000-point scorers in their starting lineup at the Elite Eight. Their fifth starter, sophomore C.J. Hester, had scored more than 900 points in two seasons
- Consensus All-American Alex Falk was named NCAA Division II National Player of the Year by Basketball Times, Daktronics and the Division II Bulletin
- Falk set school single-season records in points (764) and steals (109) while becoming only the fourth 2,000-point scorer in West Liberty history (2,014 points)
- Head coach Jim Crutchfield leads all NCAA men’s basketball coaches in career winning percentage (241-45, .843)
- Crutchfield won his fifth straight WVIAC Coach of the Year honor and was the Atlantic Region Coach of the Year for the third consecutive season
- West Liberty has been held under 100 points only 40 times in its last 105 games over the past three seasons
- The Hilltoppers have won their last six NCAA Division II Atlantic Region tournament games by double figures