Orange Sliced
January 26, 2005 10:14 PM | General
January 26, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Sherell Sowho scored 20 points and freshman Chakhia Cole added a career-high 19 points to go with 11 rebounds to lead West Virginia to an 81-50 win over Syracuse Wednesday night at the WVU Coliseum.
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| Sherell Sowho fights for a loose ball during West Virginia's game with Syracuse Wednesday night. Sowho finished with a game-high 20 points.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
The victory was West Virginia coach Mike Carey’s 350th of his career.
“I’ve been coaching long enough to where I guess they just add up,” said Carey of number 350. “The thing I’m proud of is these young girls. They play hard and they practice hard.”
Cole easily played her best game of the year, making eight of 14 field goal attempts and adding three steals. “I think she’s come a long way,” said Carey. “Chakhia has learned a lot. The one thing I like about Chakhia is she works hard. Right or wrong, she’s going to go full speed.”
“We executed our offense extremely well tonight,” said Cole. “Everybody played their role and everybody hit their open shots. If not, then we had people crashing the boards so everything just worked out.”
Yolanda Paige contributed 15 points and 13 assists for the Mountaineers, now 12-6, 3-4. The victory puts West Virginia back in the middle of the Big East standings in a three-way tie with St. John’s and Pitt for sixth place.
Against Syracuse Wednesday night, West Virginia jumped out to an early 11-point lead on the Orange and led 39-26 at halftime.
“I thought early on we got our running game going and got some easy buckets and got our confidence and I think that’s what set the tone,” said Carey.
Syracuse (10-8, 2-5) chose to take Big East scoring leader Meg Bulger out of the game and that opened up lanes for Sowho, Cole and Paige to score. Still, Bulger scored seven of West Virginia’s first 14 points to help the Mountaineers take control of the game.
“You take your chances and you try to match up as best as you can,” said Syracuse coach Keith Cieplicki. “You have to take something away from this team. I think they’re obviously very strong on the perimeter and they made plays.”
“Meg Bulger didn’t score a lot but she had eight rebounds, two assists, and was the biggest cheerleader we had over there telling the rest of them, ‘Take your shots,’” said Carey.
An early 7-3 run by Syracuse at the start of the second half reduced West Virginia’s lead to 10, 43-33, but the Mountaineers used an 8-0 run to get it back to 18, 51-33, with 14:07 remaining. Syracuse made one more run to close WVU’s lead to 13, 57-44, on a three by Lauren Kohn at 7:50. Then the Mountaineers put the Orange away for good with an 11-0 run to take a 22-point lead, 68-44, with 4:53 left.
“We let them cut it down but I never felt that they were going to come back on us during the game,” Carey said. “We started relaxing a little bit and not taking good shots -- fading away on our shots and that type of stuff.”
West Virginia held a 45-30 rebounding edge over Syracuse including grabbing 14 offensive rebounds. The Mountaineers made 33 of 70 field goal attempts for 47.1 percent and made 14 steals.
“The one thing we hoped to do was contain them a little bit more in transition and that’s the one area that I thought hurt us,” Cieplicki said.
Syracuse shot 20 of 56 from the floor for 35.7 percent and had 17 turnovers. Vaida Sipaviciute led Syracuse with 17 points.
Top scorer Chineze Nwagbo was poked in the eye while trying to grab a loose ball early in the first half and was limited to just two points in 13 minutes of action.
“It was some type of eye injury on the jump ball,” Cieplicki said. “I’m not sure what happened but she was out a long time there and obviously that hurt us a little bit but I don’t think it was the game.”
Wednesday night’s victory was West Virginia’s fourth straight over the Orange in a series the Mountaineers now lead 8-7.
“We needed a win bad,” said Carey. “Both teams were 2-4 and we came in here and took care of business which is what we should do on our home floor.”
Carey believes his team has now put four solid performances together in a row in beating Seton Hall and suffering close road losses at Boston College and Villanova before downing Syracuse tonight.
“I felt against Boston College we played as well as we have all year -- a lot better than we did tonight,” Carey said. “We had a lot of positives there. I think we are coming on and I think we’re pulling together. Our young people, especially in the post area, have got to continue to get better as the year goes on.
“We’ve got some games coming up that we really need to win,” Carey said. “If you look at our schedule the majority of the games were on the road early and we’ve got a stretch coming up after Rutgers and Georgetown here at home that is going to be very important.”
WVU returns to the court Sunday afternoon to take on nationally ranked Rutgers in a Big East game that will be televised live by Big East Television. Tip off is set for noon.
