March 19 Notebook
March 20, 2005 03:16 AM | General
March 19, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – There are so many angles to pursue in West Virginia’s monumental 111-105 double-overtime upset triumph over No. 5-rated Wake Forest Saturday night at Cleveland State’s 13,000-seat Wolstein Center packed to the rafters with Old Gold and Blue.
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| West Virginia's TyroneSally and D'or Fischer celebrate the Mountaineers' 111-105 upset victory over Wake Forest Saturday night.
AP photo |
You could start with the fabulous play of hometown hero Mike Gansey, who scored 19 of his 29 points in the two overtime periods in front of friends and family. Gansey was deservedly named by ESPN College Game Day as its “performer of the day.”
The Internet recruiting experts weren’t exactly jumping for joy when Gansey decided to transfer from St. Bonaventure. I have this question for those same experts: Name a bigger impact sign for West Virginia in the last 10-15 years than Gansey? Remember, this is his first year playing in the Mountaineer program.
You could talk about West Virginia’s three seniors Tyrone Sally, D’or Fischer and Duriel Price, who each agonizingly watched the second overtime from the bench hoping their teammates could somehow give them just one more game. Fischer unselfishly ceded his starting role to Kevin Pittsnogle for the good of the team and finally embraced it tonight by shutting down Wake’s 291-pound man-child Eric Williams. When Fischer put two of Williams’ close-range shots right back into his face in a row it became a whole different basketball game.
And for me, Tyrone Sally’s story is particularly compelling because he was the last remaining scholarship player from that dreadful season in 2002. No one, including Sally, could have ever imagined West Virginia coming back so far so quickly. Just the mention of Sally and the fact that he is going to graduate in May gets Coach John Beilein choked up.
You could spend hours talking about the terrific job John Beilein has done at a school the cynics say is impossible to win at because of its inaccessibility to urban areas. All Beilein has done is sign a bunch of no-name recruits (the nucleus coming on the heels of an 8-20 season) and three years later turned WVU into one of 16 teams still practicing basketball next week with the dream of winning the big prize still in its sights.
Beilein has done this by facing unquestionably the toughest schedule in school history. This is a fact: no WVU coach has even come close to playing 12 nationally ranked teams in one season like Beilein has this year. This is also a fact: no coach in WVU history has ever won seven games against ranked teams like he has.
The so-called experts say his WVU team this year isn’t talented or athletic. One New York scribe even likened it to a rec team. But Beilein counters by saying basketball IQ, dedication and mental and physical toughness are talents, too. After watching West Virginia put up 111 on the mighty Demon Deacons with at least two NBA draft picks on their roster, that’s a tough one to argue anymore.
You could talk about the great job J.D. Collins has done evolving into a very tough and dependable big-time college point guard. Collins has spent the last two years listening to criticism for his inability to shoot the ball and score, but he seems to make the tough shots when they count and his 12 points against all-everything point guard Chris Paul shows that he’s not too bad either. And even more than that, Collins has the courage to take the tough shot and is man enough to take the responsibility if he misses -- same goes for Joe Herber.
You could talk about the terrific job Patrick Beilein has done being the coach’s son and being the coach on the floor. Two years ago, he was regularly being abused by opposing team’s student sections for his family ties – the Notre Dame students calling him “daddy’s girl.” But for some strange reason the abuse all the sudden stopped this year when he started making three after three after three.
You could talk about the gutsy job youngsters Frank Young, Darris Nichols and Luke Bonner have done providing key minutes for the team off the bench. Young has been fantastic since the Big East tournament and Nichols stepped up and hit some clutch free throws against Wake Forest with the weight of the world resting on his slender 18-year-old shoulders.
And yes, you could talk about the wonderful job Beilein’s dedicated and intelligent assistants have done helping the team get prepared. From outstanding up-and-coming coaches like Jeff Neubauer and Matt Brown, to the quiet and dignified Jerry Dunn who has been through this before as a head coach with Penn State. West Virginia has lost 10 games this year, but not a single one of them was because of a lack of preparation.
All of these angles are certainly worthy of mentioning.
But, being ‘historically minded’ as former WVU SID Eddie Barrett has told me every time I’ve called him to check a fact or to listen to a story, I want to turn back the pages of time to 1954 when West Virginia wasn’t formally invited into the Atlantic Coast Conference when the North Carolina schools decided to drop out of the Southern Conference.
Barrett told me WVU athletic director Roy Hawley’s greatest disappointment was that he wasn’t able to produce the votes to get into the new all-sports league. Those voting against West Virginia said the school was too hard to get to (there were no interstate highways then) and it wasn’t academically compatible.
Getting into an outstanding all-sports league was the goal of every WVU athletic director until Ed Pastilong was finally able to steer the Mountaineers into the Big East Conference on a full-fledged basis in 1996. That will be his lasting legacy.
It was the dream of Harry Stansbury, Hawley, Red Brown, Leland Byrd and Fred Schaus to have the Mountaineer athletic program competing at the highest level under the brightest of lights. Tonight West Virginia University, members of the Big East Conference, was able to do that so magnificently and proudly.
Stansbury, Hawley and Brown would have been mighty proud of this moment, as I’m sure Schaus and Byrd were Saturday night watching this all unfold in front of their eyes. In an ironic twist of fate, just 10 minutes before West Virginia took to the Wolstein Center floor, Wisconsin-Milwaukee was polishing off Boston College.
The Eagles left the floor to the chant “ACC … ACC … ACC …” as they did when they left Madison Square Garden after the Mountaineers knocked them out of the Big East tournament in their last league game.
West Virginia’s memorable win over Wake Forest also came on the same night wrestler Greg Jones became a very rare three-time NCAA champion and is now considered one of the sport’s all-time greats.
Not too shabby for the Mountaineers, huh?
