SYRACUSE, N.Y. —  

It was Aaron Levenstein who once noted that “statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.”

Now I have to admit that I have no idea who Aaron Levenstein is and, considering that deadline is rapidly approaching, I find it less than prudent to Google him at the moment.

But I do not need to Google him to tell you he is a wise man, especially after viewing West Virginia University’s dismantling of Washington, 69-56, to survive to play yet another day in the NCAA Championship, the last Big East team standing.

You see, the box score will tell you that the Mountaineers ripped down 49 rebounds to 29 for Washington, which is the kind of revelation you can get from a bikini, and it can tell you that Kevin Jones had 18 points, Da’Sean Butler 14 and Devin Ebanks 12, all of which tells you something.

But concealed under all the numbers was the true strength behind this victory, at least in the eyes of the one man who matters the most, coach Bob Huggins.

While the world questioned him endlessly at the end of the evening about Butler and Jones and Ebanks, as if that drum hasn’t been beaten enough, Huggins had other ideas about who the hero of the game was.

“I told those guys walking up here,” Huggins said, those guys being Butler, Jones and Ebanks, “I thought the MVP of the game was John Flowers.”

Flowers had but four points. He added five rebounds. He chipped in an assist, a steal and a blocked shot.

It wasn’t eye-popping numbers, but what he did was provide a certain energy in the second half that carried the Mountaineers, a defensive presence that allowed West Virginia to turn every effort Washington made at mounting a comeback into another disaster.

And, in a way, he was building on yet what another overlooked player delivered.

That player would be the Turkish freshman, Deniz Kilicli, seldom used this year but needed terribly toward the end of a first half of basketball that was so un-West Virginia that it is best not talked about.

“It was a struggle; I’m not going to lie to you,” Butler would say, referring to how the team had to adjust to playing without Truck Bryant, its wounded point guard. “I hate having to bring the ball up. We did a poor job of taking care of the ball.”

Unable to take care of the ball, they also were unable to force their will on the Huskies, playing something less than a physical half until Huggins summoned Kilicli from the end of the bench.

“Deniz got six points in five minutes. He probably could

have scored a couple more if we’d thrown him the ball when he was open. We were struggling to score, and that’s one thing Deniz can do.”

In this case, it was one thing Kilicli had to do. See, he came into the game and, well, let’s allow him to explain it.

“I came in the game and got confused on defense and I just chased a guy and he got by me and scored,” Kilicli explained.

It was an easy basket, the kind that drives Huggins crazy.

Kilicli glanced the coach’s way, hoping he wasn’t yet getting someone ready to come in.

“That’s how it is if you are a freshman. You mess up once, you sit for three games,” he said.

But Huggins was looking for a spark, for a scorer, for someone to push someone around, and at 6-9 and 260 pounds, Kilicli is just the man to do it.

“He knew he better do something,” Huggins said. “He knew if he didn’t he wasn’t going to last very long. He gave us a huge boost.”

He banged bodies, crashed the boards, put up shots, missed them, went up and got the rebound and put them up again.

“The big guy was their weakest guy, so I did what I could do,” Kilicli said.

“That was the strongest he played this year,” guard Joe Mazzulla said.

What he did was light the wick to the stick of dynamite that is the 2009-10 Mountaineers, a team that is dangerous when lit.

“He brought it,” the game’s hidden MVP, Flowers, said. “He’s a scoring machine.”

“He was the spark and we ran with it,” Butler said.

Kilicli never left the bench after that.

Didn’t have to.

Butler, Jones and Ebanks outscored Washington alone in the second half. The Mountaineers mauled the Huskies on the boards after the intermission and turned the game into their kind of game, a game where bodies fly, and it went back to Kilicli and Flowers.

And so now it’s on to the Elite Eight, one game to the Final Four, a battle against a Kentucky team that the numbers say should beat the Mountaineers.

But as Mark Twain used to say, “You have lies, damned lies and statistics.”

Now we all know who Mark Twain is, right?

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.