Duquesne Preview
November 23, 2004 03:36 PM | General
November 23, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia basketball team spent Tuesday morning practicing to loud music as a way of preparing for its two-game road trip to Duquesne Wednesday night and at LSU on Saturday.
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| Joe Herber makes a pass during last Saturday's 82-70 victory over St. Peter's at the WVU Coliseum.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
Mountaineer coach John Beilein says it’s a way for his team to work on communication.
“If you go to an away gym whether there are 500 people or 15,000 it’s distracting,” he reasoned. “They will be loud and they will distract you and you’ve got to be able to work through those distractions."
Asked if he thought that was neccessary considering Duquesne drew about 2,000 fans for Lafayette Beilein responded: “We expect a larger crowd because we’re not Lafayette; we’re West Virginia.”
Duquesne is looking to rebound from a pair of disappointing losses at New Mexico and at home to Lafayette last Saturday. The Dukes are 1-3 already, having also defeated North Carolina A&T and losing to Santa Clara to open the regular season.
Coach Danny Nee has a junior-oriented lineup with 6-foot-8 Keith Gayden at one forward, 6-foot-5 Jack Higgins at the wing guard and 6-foot-3 Bryant McAllister at the shooting guard spot. McAllister’s father Bryant, Sr. played football at WVU in the early 1980s.
The rest of Duquesne’s lineup is made up of 6-foot-9 sophomore center Kieron Achara and 6-foot-4 senior guard Martin Osimani.
“Their two big guys (Ron Dokes and Elijah Palmer) are gone and Jimmy Tricco is gone so they’ve lost a little bit there,” said Beilein. “But they have two explosive guards that can score in Osimani and McAllister. Their big kids are improved. Higgins is a 45 percent three-point shooter.”
McAllister is Duquesne’s top scorer averaging 17 points per game. He is coming off a career-high 24-point effort in the Dukes’ 85-71 loss to Lafayette. Osimani is also coming on strong having scored back-to-back 16-point games against New Mexico and Lafayette.
Achara is averaging 12.3 points and 8.3 rebounds per game.
West Virginia (1-0) traditionally struggles with Duquesne, particularly inside the A.J. Palumbo Center. The Mountaineers are just 13-22 against Duquesne in games played at Pittsburgh and the Dukes have won four of the last six meetings.
Beilein says the reason Duquesne has been so successful against West Virginia is because there isn’t a huge difference between the conferences the two teams play in.
“If you see what Xavier did last year, what St. Joe’s did last year and what Richmond did last year the A-10 is not a non-power conference,” Beilein said. “It is a heck of a conference and so you play them home and home every year you have a slight advantage at home and a slight disadvantage on the road.”
Even though the LSU game is on the horizon, Beilein isn’t concerned about Duquesne being a trap game for his team.
“We have enough time in between,” he said. “We wanted a couple of road games and we don’t leave home for the whole month of December. You’ve got to go on the road and play or else you’re not prepared for Villanova. We wanted to make sure we had two games that would be similar to a Villanova type game before we got into the league schedule.”
Just like Duquesne, Beilein says his team is still searching for the right chemistry.
“You’re trying to get ready for your team to be good in January and February. Unfortunately how you play before your league season has a lot to do with how you are selected at the end. They are important games but some things you just can’t bring together this early no matter how much experience you have,” he said.
West Virginia is coming off an 82-70 season-opening victory over St. Peter’s last Saturday night. Senior D’or Fischer led five double-figure scorers with 24 points. Mike Gansey, making his regular season debut, contributed 16 points and seven assists.
Tyrone Sally and Kevin Pittsnogle contributed 16 and 13 points respectively while Joe Herber added 10.
Game time Wednesday night is 7:05 pm. MSN’s radio coverage begins at 6:35 pm with the pre-game show.
Briefly:
“Any game we can get in the Southeastern Conference, ACC or Big Ten that is a straight one-for-one we’ve got to take,” he said. “We don’t really care which end of the home and home we’re on. I’d like to have some balance. In an ideal world you’d have LSU here this year and North Carolina State here the next. But two years ago we had Tennessee and Florida here at the same time. You can’t always have that but we did want to make sure we had teams from the other big conferences coming either to Morgantown or Charleston.”
