Women's Basketball: WVU Travels to Villanova
January 18, 2006 11:49 AM | General
January 18, 2006
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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – A battle of dramatically contrasting styles will take place tonight at Villanova when West Virginia takes on the Wildcats in an important Big East game for both teams.
Villanova, under veteran coach Harry Perretta, prefers to spread teams out, hold the basketball at mid-court and run the shot clock to shorten games, and then beat you with the 3.
“They remind me a lot of our men’s team,” said West Virginia junior guard Meg Bulger, who is third in the conference with a 19.7-points-per-game average. “They’re real tough to defend, they’re constantly moving and everyone can shoot.”
West Virginia (10-4, 3-1), on the other hand, prefers an up-tempo, full-court game using its athletes to convert fast break baskets. The problem is for the majority of the games West Virginia has played against Villanova, Perretta’s style has won out. Mountaineer coach Mike Carey says his young team can’t be frustrated by Villanova’s deliberate style of play.
“We can’t play defense for 25 seconds and then give up an offensive rebound and play defense for another 25 seconds,” Carey said. “That’s when you get frustrated. It’s important to play defense for 20-25 seconds and then get the rebound. We can then run some because we’re more athletic than they are. We’ve got to get up and down the floor a little bit and try and make it that type of game.”
Villanova is coming off an 84-75 loss at No. 11 DePaul last Saturday to drop them into a tie with five other teams for 10th place in the conference standings. Senior forward Liad Suez-Karni scored 20 points on 4 of 11 shooting from 3-point range against the Blue Demons. Villanova shot 49.1 percent overall including 9 of 24 from 3-point distance. The Wildcats are the top team in the country turning the ball over an average of just 11 times per game.
“It’s the same old Villanova team – different names but same program,” Carey said. “They spread you out, have a bunch of shooters and run a lot of motion game with five out and they pull your big people away from the bucket.”
Villanova, 10-5, 1-3, has played the much tougher conference schedule of the two, beating Syracuse and losing to Connecticut, Louisville and DePaul. The Wildcats need a win to get back into the middle of the league pack.
“I talked to Harry yesterday and he said they’re ready. I said, ‘We are, too.’ We’ll be up there,” Carey smiled. “He knows this is an important game for them being 1-3 in the league and they’ve played the top teams in the conference and they need a win badly.”
West Virginia has lost two straight to Villanova since knocking the Wildcats out of the 2004 Big East tournament in Hartford, Conn., 58-47, and has lost all nine games played at Villanova dating back to 1979. Mike Carey-coached teams are 0-3 at Villanova.
“We need to beat a good team on the road,” Carey said. “This is an opportunity for us to go to Villanova and play a very good basketball team and try and beat them. We’ve got to go up there and play well. They are the type of team where they could be down 10 but because they shoot the 3 so well we’re going to have to finish the game off.”
Tip off for tonight’s game is 7:30 pm. MSN radio will carry the game live n WAJR-AM (Morgantown), WAJR-FM (Clarksburg), WHIS-AM (Bluefield), WSWW (Charleston), WTCS (Fairmont), WDNE (Elkins) and through the Internet on CSTV All-Access.
