Marshall Preview
January 20, 2004 12:57 PM | General
January 20, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia coach John Beilein wants to win Wednesday night’s Toyota Capital Classic against Marshall, but at the same time he’s more concerned about seeing his young team make improvement.
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| Center D'or Fischer ranks third at WVU in single season blocks with 55 in just 14 games so far. (AP photo) |
“Whether we’re playing a Big East team or a fine team like Marshall, we’re just trying to get better,” Beilein said Monday afternoon. “We had three freshmen out there playing a great deal against Providence and they learned a lot.”
The three freshmen Beilein were referring to were forwards Jerrah and Franklin Young, and point guard Tyler Relph.
The two Youngs combined to shoot just 1 of 14 against Providence for 3 points. Relph finished the game with 11 points, but made only 4 of 12 shot attempts.
“That was a great learning experience for them,” said Beilein. “(Jerrah) watches that tape and he thinks he’s running with Ryan Gomes and then all of the sudden they get to the other end of the basket and Gomes is five feet ahead of him.”
Jerrah Young, a 6-foot-6 forward, is expected to make his fourth start of the season Wednesday night against Marshall.
“He is learning so much,” said Beilein. “I think in Big East games we’re being out-rebounded one or two a game. That is probably a lot with Jerrah and what we’re trying to do.”
Young has helped West Virginia become a better rebounding club but the Mountaineers are still not a very good rebounding team. WVU has closed the rebounding margin to less than minus-seven now that Jerrah is in the starting lineup.
Beilein is also trying to find ways to get even more production out of 6-foot-7 junior forward Tyrone Sally. After scoring 10 and 11 points in back to back games against Georgetown and Virginia Tech, Sally slipped to just 4 in a 21-point loss at Providence.
Beilein says it’s a matter of Tyrone becoming more assertive on the court.
“He is a guy that is introverted about everything thrown at him over his career at West Virginia. He responds when really motivated but how do you motivate him?” asked Beilein. “You can tell him a lot of positive things and motivate him. Or do you get after him a little bit and motivate him that way? That’s what I’m still trying to search for.”
When the Providence game got out of hand early in the second half the coach once again tinkered with the notion of playing 6-foot-11 D’or Fischer and 6-foot-10 Kevin Pittsnogle on the floor at the same time. The coach expects to conduct more experiments.
“What you’ve got to do is change your system according to the personnel you have,” he said. “We thought we had one group of personnel and it didn’t work out. We thought we had another group and it didn’t work out. We just keep changing until you find what fits.”
What would fit perfectly for West Virginia right now is a win over a struggling Marshall team that is 6-7 overall under first-year coach Ron Jirsa, who replaced Greg White last spring.
Jirsa comes to Marshall from Dayton where he served as an assistant coach under Oliver Purnell. Jirsa has head coaching experience in the SEC at Georgia where he headed the Bulldogs program from 1997-99. His teams made back-to-back NIT appearances and won 20 games his first season in 1997. Jirsa replaced Tubby Smith, whom he first developed a relationship with while both were assistants under J.D. Barnett at VCU.
“Ron has done a great, great job as both a head coach and as an assistant coach and they have a terrific coaching there as well as a very good team that is getting better by the minute,” said Beilein.
Jirsa is trying to reconfigure a Marshall program that posted a losing 14-15 record last year. Most recently, Marshall won its last game at home against Buffalo after dropping three straight to Kent State, Western Michigan and Toledo.
Against Buffalo, Marshall went with a starting lineup featuring 6-foot-8 junior Eric Smith and 6-foot-9 sophomore Mark Patton at forwards, 6-foot-10 senior Ardo Armpalu at center, and 6-foot-4 freshman Tre Whitted and 6-foot-3 junior A.W. Hamilton at guards.
Now coming off the bench after starting 10 games is 6-foot-7 senior forward Marvin Black, who leads Marshall in scoring with an average of 13.5 points per game. Black is shooting 55.8 percent from the floor and is averaging a team-best 7.5 rebounds per game.
Six-three junior guard Ronny Dawn has also been an important contributor, averaging 9.7 points and 1.4 assists per game while starting 10 of 13 games.
Marshall shoots 42.9 percent from the floor including 35.1 percent from three-point range. Marshall has taken 239 three-point attempts in 13 games for an average of 18.3 per game.
By comparison, West Virginia is averaging 20.4 three-point attempts per game and tried 34 threes in its last game at Providence.
“We know that this game holds a great amount of meaning for people throughout the state and we’re just going to go out and do everything we can,” said Beilein.
Wednesday’s game will get underway at 8 pm and will be televised statewide on the Capital Classic Network (John Sanders and Frank Giardina). Stations carrying the telecast are WBOY (Clarksburg), WTRF (Wheeling), WJAL (Chambersburg, Pa.), WTAP (Parkersburg), WOWK (Charleston/Huntington) and WVNS (Beckley).
The WVU women will take on the Marshall women at 5:30 pm and that contest will be televised via Public Television. Tickets for both games are still available and can be purchased by calling the Charleston Civic Center box office at (304) 345-7469.
