BUFFALO — In West Virginia’s desperate hour Thursday against Bucknell, it was almost as if Tarik Phillip remembered what Brooklyn has done for his game.

“Go to a park, it’s about 20 guys out there, you gotta win to stay on, so you got the winner’s mentality from just playing in the park knowing that if you lose you gotta sit three, four games and watching them all, shoot on the side hoops or something like that,” Phillip told The Post after the fourth-seeded Mountaineers earned a showdown with Notre Dame with an 86-80 victory over the 13th-seeded Bison. “That put a little chip on your shoulder to [make it a] win-every-game type thing.”

That chip was missing a year ago against No. 14 seed Stephen F. Austin, with family and friends left shell-shocked after a 70-56 West Virginia loss at Barclays Center.

“That was traumatizing for everybody to be honest,” Phillip said. “I had over about 20-something people there. I just feel like we just didn’t play good that game. It was just a bad game overall for us.”

It was a bad game for Phillip personally (0-for-6 shooting, six turnovers), but redemption finally arrived one year later. And so what if his friends and family didn’t see it in person.

“Redemption game for us, I would say,” Phillip said. “We let our seniors down last year. We just wanted to come out and show them that we’re not a fluke team ’cause last year everybody thought we were a fluke team, we lost in the first round to a team we shoulda beat, so we just wanted to come out and make a little sorta statement.”

Phillip made a loud statement they could have heard back in his native Canarsie. With Bison big man Nana Foulland in foul trouble, Phillip followed his own missed drive and then hit a jumper that gave the Mountaineers, fighting off Kimbal Mackenzie’s 3-point assault, a 71-64 cushion with just under 5 ¹/₂ minutes left in the game.

“We had to get the ball to the rim,” Phillip said. “We just were staying in attack mode to be honest. That’s when the team told me, ‘Keep driving, keep driving.’ ”

Then he sank six free throws in the final minute.

“Coach [Bob Huggins] makes us make 100 before we leave practice, so it’s just the hard work paying off,” Phillip said.

Phillip finished with 16 points in 16 minutes following a first half that saw him get in early foul trouble and land on the bench for 16 minutes.

“I was handsy in the beginning,” Phillip said.

Phillip, a lithe 6-foot-3 senior, was asked to rate the vaunted West Virginia press. “I’ll say a B-minus,” he said.

How much better does it need to be against the Fighting Irish?

“A lot better than a B-minus,” Phillip said. “It’s gonna get better.”

His has been a journey filled with hardship and heartache, a one-and-done at Christ The King High School, then pit stops at Indian Hills Community College in Iowa, Howard Community College in Maryland and Independence Community College in Kansas.

“It’s just been humbling, you know?, I’ve been so many places, different schools, so just to be here, found a home in West Virginia, it’s a great experience and now that we’re winning it’s even better,” Phillip said.

He was two wins from a Final Four two years ago as a reserve, and now Tarik Phillip is one win from a Sweet 16.

“I didn’t want this to be my last game,” he said.

Brooklyn, still in Da House.