Despite leading by five points with 25 seconds left in regulation, the Gonzaga Bulldogs were defeated by the West Virginia Mountaineers 84-78 in overtime in the quarterfinal round of Battle 4 Atlantis on Wednesday.

The Zags (5-1) led by double digits in the second half, but the Mountaineers (4-1) quickly struck back behind Javon Small and Tucker DeVries. WVU went on a 17-2 winning run to take a 50-45 lead at 12:26, ​​setting off a back-and-forth battle that appeared to be decided in the final minute when Gonzaga took a 71-66 lead against a Two free throws from Ryan Nembhard. Braden Huff had put the team in position to close out the win by scoring six straight points before Nembhard’s charity appearance.

However, West Virginia’s teeming defense didn’t fail without a fight. The Mountaineers did just enough to force Gonzaga’s backcourt into a turnover with less than 20 seconds left when DeVries was sent to the foul line for two free throws after escaping on a loose ball on a 2-point play and at had been fouled while attempting a layup. DeVries hit both shots into the charity stripe to force overtime. At that point, however, the Zags had nothing left in the tank.

Here’s what head coach Mark Few had to say after the loss.

How Gonzaga’s latest regulatory action affected:

“In tournaments like this you will find yourself in many different situations. We were obviously in one there and I should have called the timeout because things were progressing and it wasn’t looking good. “I probably should have burned one. We had it in the hands of our two guards, but it was just junk and I had to call a timeout.

On West Virginia knocking down 11 3-pointers:

“That’s about what they’re capable of. We knew that if we weren’t close throughout the game with our style of transition and what we like to do there, our communication and the way we execute our plan, I knew that.” Even in the first It didn’t feel good at halftime when we were pretty good defensively, but then there were phases where we changed our coverage. And then here too we just made a few mistakes at the end.”

What the Zags can learn from the adversity they faced against WVU:

“These tournaments offer a variety of different situations, as I said. We had a few in the game. We had some situations with our switches that we didn’t execute. We had some coverages that were rock solid for us.” That probably wasn’t all that solid. And as B. Huff said, some of our actions are pretty stalled and trust the next one and another targeted action, whether it’s a ball screen or a pin down or a post touch. But also that game came down to some kind of execution at the end, I should have just jumped up and used that timeout when I saw them fighting the press, so yeah, that’s on me.”