Back to Work
January 21, 2005 03:17 PM | General
January 21, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – For John Beilein to go through Syracuse’s roster with the media right now in advance of West Virginia’s Saturday afternoon Big East game in the Carrier Dome is almost pointless.
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| West Virginia's Joe Herber and the rest of his teammates are looking for a better shooting performance at No. 7 Syracuse Saturday.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
Everyone knows the No. 7-rated, 18-1 Orangemen are loaded from top to bottom with two of the country’s best players in senior forward Hakim Warrick and junior guard Gerry McNamara.
What Beilein is interested in doing is repairing the mindset of his struggling basketball team that can’t seem to find its shooting stroke and is coming off what he calls “one of the poorest games we might have played” against Notre Dame last Wednesday night.
In that game, the Irish shot 52 percent from three-point distance and once again WVU couldn’t find the basket, making just 33.3 percent of its field goal tries. West Virginia has turned a 10-0 start into an 11-4 record at present with many difficult games still ahead.
Beilein says it’s his job to try and keep his team from shouldering too much of the burden right now.
“We’ve played three pretty certain NCAA tournament teams in Villanova when they were at full strength, and then playing Boston College and Notre Dame,” Beilein said Friday afternoon. “It’s obvious something happened along the line in those games that we lost and we haven’t handled it well. As a result we’ve lost some confidence.
“We haven’t been a team that is having problems, it’s just that the confidence factor has completely changed and that’s been a big thing for us,” he mentioned. “Getting that back takes a win and it’s very hard to do right now with the teams that we’re playing.”
Syracuse presents all kind of problems for West Virginia with its size, quickness and athletic ability. Playing the Orange inside the Carrier Dome only compounds the issue; Syracuse is 58-4 the last four years at home and owns a 14-game home winning streak coming into Saturday’s game.
“We’re going to have to really shoot the ball well from the outside and make sure we challenge the abilities of both Hakim Warrick and Gerry McNamara,” Beilein said. “They’re just outstanding talents. They’re going to make shots and they’re going to make tough shots. But if you give them a lot of easy shots then all of the sudden they can just get away from you.”
West Virginia (11-4, 1-3) is in the midst of its toughest stretch of the season, playing Syracuse (18-1, 5-0) and then Connecticut (11-3, 3-1) in a span of three days before going to Providence (9-8, 0-4) on Jan. 29. After that the Mountaineers go to unbeaten Boston College (15-0, 4-0) before returning home to face Pitt (12-3, 2-2).
“We just got done playing two teams that are 27-3 combined and now we play two teams that are 29-4 combined,” Beilein said. “It’s a difficult thing and we’ve got to go through it and try and get better every time down the floor and make progress despite the difficult odds and not say, ‘Hey we can’t win.’ It’s very difficult scheduling in the Big East and getting all of those games and we’re in a difficult stretch right now.
“Tell me what easy games there are in the Big East? There aren’t any.”
Beilein recalls going through a similar tough stretch during his final season at Richmond in 2002.
“At Richmond we had a span like this in my last year there where we were on a roll and I didn’t think that we were that talented and then all of the sudden we got beat at home by VCU who we had beaten twice the year before,” he said. “Then all of the sudden we lost to Mississippi State, lost to Cincinnati and lost to UNC Charlotte and we couldn’t buy a bucket. It was very similar to this.”
Back then, however, Richmond went through its difficult spell early in the year and Beilein had time to get his team through it against Atlantic 10 competition.
“It was a little bit earlier in December and we had some time to retool during that time as well,” he noted. “We just haven’t had time to try and stay in game shape and teach at the same time. We’ve got to do it little by little.”
Part of the learning process, according to Beilein, is figuring out how your team will react to losses. For the first two months of the season the Mountaineers didn’t lose a game.
“You don’t know how your team will react confidence-wise to losses until you lose,” he said. “We’ve been able to take one day off since Christmas. We haven’t been able to get any better and the teams are just getting tougher and tougher.
“Losing is not unexpected. But to all of the sudden collectively have a whole team play this way …,” he said.
Beilein’s believes his only alternative is to roll up his sleeves and get back to work and help his team regain its confidence and get through this tough stretch, beginning with Saturday’s game against Syracuse.
“It could be worse, it always could be worse,” he said. “The thing we’ve got to teach these guys is it’s not the end of the world and you’ve just got to stay with it and not hang your head. That’s what is bothering us the most right now. They’re good kids and they don’t blame other people -- they blame themselves and carry it around and we’ve got to stop that.”
Tip off for the Syracuse game is 2 pm and the contest will air on ESPN Regional (Dave Ryan and Bob Valvano). Stations locally carrying the game include WVFX (Clarksburg), WCHS (Charleston/Huntington), WOAY (Beckley), WJAL (Chambersburg, Pa.) and ESPN Full Court. The game will not be televised in the northern panhandle on WTOV in Steubenville, Ohio.
