Fighting for First
February 12, 2006 10:25 PM | General
February 12, 2006
WASHINGTON, D.C. – No. 1-ranked Duke goes into the MCI Center and loses to Georgetown 87-84. West Virginia, coming off its worst shooting performance of the season at Pitt Thursday night and in the midst of a critical three-game Big East road swing, is a prohibitive underdog to the Hoyas. And WVU’s best player Kevin Pittsnogle is mired in a 4 for 29 shooting slump. No problem.
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| West Virginia's Frank Young, right, fights for the ball against Georgetown's Jonathan Wallace, left, during the second half of a NCAA college basketball game, Sunday, Feb. 12, 2006, in Washington. West Virginia won 69-56.
AP Photo/Nick Wass |
Pittsnogle made 10 of 15 from the floor for a game-high 25 points to help the No. 9-ranked Mountaineers deposit 16th-rated Georgetown 69-56 Sunday night in Washington, D.C. It’s a performance that must be circled and underlined in bright red ink when West Virginia’s 2005-06 campaign is finally in the books.
“This is just a great road win for us and having this as the sandwich game between our three-game road trip is huge,” said West Virginia coach John Beilein.
Georgetown came into the game having won seven straight including three blowout wins over Cincinnati, DePaul, and most recently, St. John’s Thursday night. The Hoyas were 9-1 inside the MCI Center this year having only lost to Vanderbilt back in November. No. 14 Pitt wilted under Georgetown’s pressure defense last Sunday afternoon and lost 61-58. For West Virginia all signs pointed toward its second straight conference loss.
But the Mountaineers proved resilient, overcame a difficult seven-minute stretch in the first half that saw Georgetown go on a 20-2 run and build an 11-point lead, and by sheer will was able to produce one of their most important victories of the season.
Early on West Virginia was matching Georgetown point for point and built a seven-point, 20-13 lead on a Mike Gansey 3-point basket from the wing before Georgetown caught fire.
The only basket for West Virginia during Georgetown’s run was a lay up by reserve center Rob Summers. In the meantime, the Hoyas were bombing away from 3 and creating turnovers out in the open court. Back to back steals of and reverse dunks by Brandon Bowman and Darrel Owens gave Georgetown its biggest lead of the game at 33-22 with 5:12 remaining in the first half.
“I told Frank (Young), ‘Why don’t you just throw (alley) oops to them if you’re going to turn the ball over like that’ and he was just laughing,” Beilein said. “But during that span when they had that run on us we ended up having five or six pretty good shots and we didn’t make them.”
West Virginia responded with a backdoor basket by Young and a 3 from Pittsnogle on the wing before Georgetown answered, getting the lead back to 10 after Jeff Green followed his own miss with a one-handed stuff.
J.D. Collins, who made all three of his field goals on tough drives to the basket, was able to cut Georgetown’s lead to eight, 37-29, just ahead of the halftime buzzer.
Seizing the momentum, the Mountaineers came out smoking in the second half scoring eight straight points to tie the game at 37 and forcing Georgetown coach John Thompson III to call time out ahead of the 16-minute TV time out.
Following another stop in play, Pittsnogle made a pair of free throws to give West Virginia back the lead at 39-37. The lead changed hands four times before the Mountaineers began to take control of game on an 8-0 run keyed by two big baskets from backup guard Darris Nichols -- his second a difficult contested jumper in the paint.
“Darris Nichols is starting to look very comfortable out there again,” Beilein said.
A pair of Green baskets pulled Georgetown to within three, 54-51, and the score remained that way for nearly three minutes until Pittsnogle worked himself free for a contested basket underneath the basket off a pretty pass from Collins.
After a defensive stop, West Virginia’s next possession also resulted in a lay up when Joe Herber split the defense and found Gansey open on the baseline for a backdoor basket to put West Virginia up 58-51 with 2:24 remaining.
Georgetown’s back breaker was a pair of Pittsnogle baskets, the second coming with 49 seconds left to give West Virginia a 62-51 lead. The Hoyas, which missed seven consecutive shots during a critical five-minute stretch late in the game, finally got one through the cylinder on an uncontested Brandon Bowman lay up with 39.7 seconds left.
Beilein credits a change of defense at the start of the second half as one of the keys to the game. “We got the heck out of that (1-3-1) zone defense – that’s really the only adjustment we made,” Beilein said. “We trusted our man-to-man and we’ve worked hard on it.”
"I don't think I've seen a game where they've gotten out of the zone the whole second half," Thompson III said.
Georgetown (17-5, 8-3) was a completely different team in the second half, making just 8 of 25 field goals after shooting nearly 60 percent in the first half. The taller Hoyas also out-rebounded the Mountaineers by only one (32-31) – a surprising figure considering West Virginia came into the game being out-rebounded by an average of more than nine per game.
“We’re an ugly rebounding team but we got the job done tonight,” Beilein said. “We got all of the balls below the rim. We were very fortunate down the stretch to grab those because they missed a lot of 3s.”
West Virginia shot 62 percent in the second half (15 of 24) and finished the game 27 of 51 for 52.9 percent. The Mountaineers were 9 of 11 from the free throw line.
“I love the way we made our foul shots at the end,” Beilein said.
Gansey and Herber each finished with 13 points for West Virginia, now 18-5, 9-1. Georgetown got 21 and 10 boards from Green and 15 points and 11 rebounds from Bowman.
West Virginia snapped a five-game losing streak to Georgetown at the MCI Center and swept the Hoyas for the first time in regular season play since joining the Big East Conference. The last time West Virginia won two regular season games against Georgetown was during the 1934-35 season. WVU is now 9-5 in its last 14 games against nationally ranked teams.
West Virginia also assured itself a winning Big East record in regular season play for the first time since going 11-7 in 1998.
The victory moves the Mountaineers into a three-way tie with Connecticut and Villanova for first place in the Big East standings. Connecticut and Villanova play Monday night in Philadelphia.
West Virginia remains on the road to play at Seton Hall on Tuesday night. The Pirates (15-7, 6-4) lost on Saturday to No. 1 Connecticut, 99-57 at home.
“We need to rest tomorrow and then see what we can do with Seton Hall,” Beilein said.
