For its final game preparation of the season, it was anything but a short turnaround for the WVU men’s basketball team.

More than three weeks will have passed in between the Mountaineers’ loss against BYU in the second round of the Big 12 tournament and when WVU travels to Las Vegas to play Stanford (20-12) at 8 p.m. Thursday in the opening round of the College Basketball Crown tournament.

In that time, 64 teams were eliminated from the NCAA tournament and spring break came and went. It was enough time, WVU guard Honor Huff admitted Monday, that he nearly forgot he had another game remaining in his college career.

“It’s weird, because I found myself in the house with Morris (Ugusuk), and we were watching NCAA tournament games,” Huff said. “It got to halftime, and I was like, ‘Oh shoot, we still have to go play basketball.’ It was like I forgot. We had to get to the gym, because we still have games to play.”

The Crown begins Wednesday with Oklahoma and Colorado tipping off inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena. West Virginia (18-14) and the Cardinal will meet for just the second time in history to begin the second day. The winner advances to Saturday’s semifinals to face the winner of Creighton-Rutgers.

It is a tournament that comes with, as WVU head coach Ross Hodge put it, a yin and yang. The obvious obstacle is the time lapse between the end of the conference tournaments and the start of the Crown.

“It’s very similar to college football and the bowl games, where you have a month or maybe even more than that,” Hodge said. “I think what this situation allows you to do more than others, is it did allow you to get away a little bit. Our guys got a true spring break. Coming off the conference tournament, our guys were able to get away from everyone else for a little bit.”

It also left plenty of time to put together a scouting report.

“That first week back, you’re just trying to get their legs back and get them a little bit of conditioning,” Hodge said. “It’s not like we just sat around for two weeks solely prepping for (Stanford). A lot of it was focused on ourselves and just getting back to playing basketball.”

Hodge has been on the other side of those postseason tournaments, whether it was the NIT or CBI. The NIT semifinals and finals will be competing against the Crown this week. The difference is New Mexico, Auburn, Tulsa and Illinois State all had to win three games to get to this point.

“There’s pros and cons to it,” Hodge said. “Pros, for us, was our guys actually getting a spring break. I’ve been on the other side, where you have to pick yourself off the mat and the NIT begins on a Tuesday and maybe you lost in the conference tournament on a Saturday.

“With the week off, I do think you get to miss it a little bit and learn to appreciate it in a different manner than if you had to play right away.”

Huff agreed, “I thought it was good getting that break. You come back rejuvenated. I found my shot a little bit better. I got my legs under me. It’s a give and take, but I feel it was a positive for us.”

Jenkins on the mend

WVU freshman guard Amir Jenkins will not be making the trip to Las Vegas with his teammates. Instead, he will be having the first of two shoulder surgeries.

Hodge said there was no timetable for Jenkins’ return.

“You won’t really know until they get in there and open it up,” Hodge said. “He’s scheduled to have surgery on his left shoulder on Wednesday. Then they’ll see how that goes and then he’ll have surgery on the right one. We don’t have a long-term prognosis on it right now.”

Jenkins played this season with a torn labrum in his left shoulder, which is his non-shooting shoulder. On Feb. 21, in a game at TCU, Jenkins then hurt his right shoulder, but continued to play out the season.

“I can say this now, but when he tore the other one, I was the first person he came to,” Huff said. “He said, ‘Bro, I think I tore my other one.’ I asked him what he was going to do. He said he was going to keep playing.

“It just goes to his heart and his desire to be out there for us and to play the game he loves. He could have tapped out a long time ago. To be able to play through both, when he couldn’t even lift his arms, he still wanted to be out there. It’s admirable and it motivates the rest of us.”

Huff said he plans on spending more time at point guard than usual to make up for the loss of Jenkins.

“Obviously my point-guard duties are going to grow immensely, because Jasper (Floyd), he’s old,” Huff joked. “He’s going to need his breaks. I think this week in practice, usually me and Jasper are on the same team in practice, but we’ve been on opposite teams this week. We’re prepared for it and, obviously, I did play some point guard this year.”

Not about the money

The uniqueness to the Crown is the tournament offers a prize pool of $500,000 to participating teams. There is a catch: Players have to win at least one game to finish in the money.

The breakdown: Teams who lose in the semifinals will each get $50,000 to split among its players. The team that finishes as the runner-up gets $100,000 and the team that wins the tournament earns $300,000.

“To be real, I didn’t know how any of that worked with the money,” Huff said. “My dad called me and said, ‘You know you get paid if you win.’ I didn’t know. The motivation of playing goes long past the money. It’s being able to have this one last experience with each other, because we do love each other, that motivates us more than money.”

Hodge said the talk of WVU players possibly winning some extra cash never came into the conversation when discussing if the team wanted to continue to play this season.

And to be perfectly blunt, Hodge admitted, possibly splitting $300,000 among today’s college basketball players isn’t all that eye-opening.

“This is how crazy this time period that we’re in has shifted,” Hodge said. “When they put this idea together and you said, ‘Hey you can win this amount of money.’ It probably felt very significant at one time. It’s kind of sad to say, even disgusting, but in two years, it went from a good amount of money to inconsequential, sadly. That’s sad to say.”