SYRACUSE — The Mountaineers are marching toward the mountaintop.
West Virginia’s stirring postseason ride, which includes its buzzer-beater title run in the Big East Tournament, glides on after last night’s 73-66 win over top-seeded Kentucky in the East Regional final before 22,497 at the Carrier Dome.
The victory sends second-seeded West Virginia to the Final Four for the first time since 1959. The Mountaineers (31-6) and its roster loaded with NYC-area players will take on the winner of today’s Duke-Baylor game Saturday in Indianapolis.
“I talked to these guys about being special,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. “Two more [wins] and we’re going to be really special.”
When the final buzzer sounded, West Virginia forward Devin Ebanks flung the ball high in the air toward the stands and leaped onto a table screaming.
“We’ve still got two more to go,” Ebanks said.
“That’s the attitude ‘Huggs’ has instilled in us; he told us not to be complacent, that we didn’t come here to just get to the Final Four,” said West Virginia’s Da’Sean Butler, who scored a team-high 18 points. “We have 80 minutes of basketball left to really do something special.”
The loss left Kentucky (35-3) still seeking its first Final Four since 1998.
It also possibly marked the end of two brief college basketball careers of Kentucky super freshmen John Wall, who fouled out with 19 points with 51.3 seconds remaining, and DeMarcus Cousins (15 points), both of whom could be leaning toward a jump to the NBA.
“I’m not worried about the talk about what I’m doing next; I’m just sad this ended and I’m going to enjoy my college career and finish the school year out,” Wall said.
For the two coaches who are close friends, Huggins again got the best of Kentucky’s John Calipari, defeating him for the eighth time in the nine career meetings.
A read through the boxscore tells a lot of the story to this game.
Kentucky was abysmal from three-point range, shooting an incredible 4-of-32. Perhaps even worse, Kentucky was an inexcusable 16-of-29 from the free-throw line.
Calipari credited Huggins’ liberal use of a 1-3-1 zone as one of the differences in the game.
“The 1-3-1 bothered us more than I thought it would,” Calipari said. “We’ve had [bad] shooting days like this but we won anyway because teams weren’t as good as West Virginia.”
West Virginia, meanwhile, won the game from long distance, shooting 10-of-23 despite entering the game shooting 33 percent from 3-point range this season.
West Virginia shot so poorly in the early going, it was remarkable that it took a 28-26 lead into halftime.
It was that kind of bizarre half, though.
The Mountaineers shot 8-of-15 from 3-point range in the first half while going 0-for-16 on two-point ers.
Kentucky, which entered the night having shot 52.6 percent in the NCAA Tournament, shot just 34.3 percent and missed its first 20 3-pointers.
West Virginia didn’t score its first two-point basket until two minutes into the second half.
Meanwhile, the Mountaineers continued to pour it on from three-point range in the second half, taking a 36-26 lead just 2:25 in thanks to treys from Kevin Jones and John Flowers.
That made West Virginia 10-of-17 from three-point range at that moment and made for an 8-0 run to start the second half for the Mountaineers. They would not look back from there — racing all the way to the Final Four.
mark.cannizzaro@nypost.com
