Senior Day
February 25, 2005 02:52 PM | General
Febgruary 25, 2005
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| Fischer | Price | Sally |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia faces tough-luck Rutgers Saturday afternoon at the WVU Coliseum in the final regular season home-game appearances for seniors Tyrone Sally, D’or Fischer and Duriel Price.
The Scarlet Knights (9-15, 2-11) have been without its top big man all season when 6-foot-8, 235-pound power forward Adrian Hill injured his knee last May in a pickup game. Hill scored 20 points and grabbed 11 boards in two contests last year against West Virginia and his replacement Byron Joynes, a 6-foot-9, 265-pound sophomore, has not been able to match Hill’s productivity.
Joynes is averaging 4.3 points and 5.0 rebounds per game.
Rutgers has dropped five games this year by five points or less including a two-point loss to Syracuse and a three-point overtime loss to Pitt.
“Rutgers is so darn dangerous,” said West Virginia coach John Beilein.
Sophomore scoring whiz Quincy Douby has had a tough go of it of late, going scoreless in a game against Villanova on Jan. 29 and suffering through a difficult stretch of games against St. John’s, Georgetown and Connecticut that has dropped his scoring average from 17.2 points per game prior to Big East play down to his current average of 14.8 points per game.
But Douby did regain his shooting stroke against Arkansas-Monticello Wednesday night, hitting eight of 14 from three-point range and finishing with a team-high 26 points in RU’s 83-74 victory.
“It was a step outside the conference and I thought our kids got themselves back on track,” said Rutgers coach Gary Waters. “Sometimes it’s hard to get yourself up for those kinds of games but I thought our kids did. The person who did a particularly good job was Quincy Douby, who came off the bench and I thought shot the ball extremely well for us.”
Douby, a key component in last year’s run to the NIT finals, scored 25 points in a pair of Rutgers wins over West Virginia last year – both at the RAC.
Ricky Shields has also been a Mountaineer killer in the past. The 6-foot-4 senior guard lit up West Virginia for 24 points during a 74-53 regular season Rutgers win and contributed 26 in the Knights’ 67-64 triumph in the second round of the NIT. Sheilds, who ranks ninth in career scoring at Rutgers, leads the team with an average of 13 points per game.
“Douby and Ricky Shields have beaten us by themselves at times,” Beilein said.
Six-foot-seven, 225-pound freshman Ollie Bailey has been an effective player inside for Rutgers averaging 10.6 points and 4.8 rebounds per game. The Chicago resident leads the team with a 51 percent field goal percentage.
Rutgers has had great difficulty winning Big East road games under Waters, posting just a 2-28 record in his fourth season. However, one of those two Big East road wins came in Morgantown in 2001-02 and Waters owns a 4-2 overall record against West Virginia.
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| Forward Tyrone Sally tries to avoid a charge during West Virgina's game at Pitt on Wednesday, Feb. 23.
AP Photo/Keith Srakocic |
“West Virginia is playing with a great deal of confidence and they’re playing very, very well together,” said Waters. “They started that at the beginning of the year and now they’re continuing on.”
The Mountaineers (17-8, 7-7) have elevated themselves into NCAA tournament bubble status after a surprising 70-66 win at No. 17-rated Pitt on Wednesday. Coupled with its road win at then-nationally ranked North Carolina State, it is the first time in school history that West Virginia has managed to beat two ranked teams on the road in the same year.
“I have so much respect for what Pitt has accomplished in their last few years in the Big East and especially the home advantage that they’ve created,” Beilein said. “For me personally, they all run together … wins are wins. It hasn’t got us there yet but it’s a big step in the right direction.”
Six-foot-11 forward Kevin Pittsnogle scored 22 points against the Panthers including one stretch where he made eight straight points in the second half to help West Virginia overcome a 14-point deficit. Pittsnogle is perhaps playing the best basketball of his career, averaging 18.2 points and shooting 49.3 percent over his last six games since he was inserted into the starting lineup at home against Pitt.
Pittsnogle’s current stretch of games has boosted his overall scoring average to 10.4 points per game.
“Kevin was waiting for an opportunity to play because D’or had been playing very well and he ended up getting sick,” said Beilein. “He’s playing with a lot of confidence right now and I think his ability to score points has really helped us as a team. It has opened up a lot of things for a lot of people.”
Sally leads the Mountaineers with an average of 12.7 points per game; 6-foot-4 forward Mike Gansey is averaging 11.0 points and a team-best 5.5 rebounds per game.
“We need to win more games and we’ve obviously got to play better defense and part of us playing better defense is playing better offense,” Beilein said. “If we can score the way we did in the second half (of the Pitt game) it allows us to set our defense every single time.”
In addition to recognizing its three outstanding seniors prior to Saturday’s game, West Virginia University will also honor the 1965 freshman team that integrated basketball at WVU and in the Southern Conference. Members of that freshmen team as well as other players from that era and Coach Bucky Waters will be at the game Saturday.
The Mountaineer Ticket Office has announced the game a sell-out but some Flex-Plan tickets will be available at the Gold Gate at 1 pm prior to the game. The contest is set to tip off at 2 pm.
ESPN Regional will air the game locally on stations WCHS (Charleston), WOAY (Oak Hill), WVFX (Clarksburg) and WJAL (Chambersburg, Pa.).
