Instant Analysis
February 12, 2006 11:55 PM | General
January 21, 2006
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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- West Virginia has a couple of mentally tough individuals that really care about the direction of this basketball team and they came out and played that way Sunday night at Georgetown. J.D. Collins -- the team's CEO -- finished the game with seven points and seven assists and Joe Herber scored 13 points, handed out four assists and grabbed three rebounds.
After the Pitt loss, John Beilein put in a couple of new wrinkles in his offense that featured J.D. in breakdown situations. I think we saw that tonight when he got to the rim and made some plays off the dribble. Defenses are allowing J.D. to come down in there, they’re guarding Pittsnogle and Gansey on each side of the wing, and that opens up the basket because the big guys aren’t in the lane.
I knew that West Virginia was going to have to manage the clock and I knew that the Mountaineers were going to have to keep Georgetown off the foul line. If they could do that then they would have a good chance of winning. Well, there was 16 minutes left in the entire game before anybody went to the foul line and it would up being Kevin Pittsnogle. West Virginia made 9 of 11 from the line and Georgetown was only 1 of 5.
What scared me about this game was once Georgetown gets a lead at home, they’re very tough to come back on. At one point West Virginia trailed by 11 in the first half after a couple of turnovers led to dunks. To me, that’s why this victory tonight was really something special because they came back on a team like this -- beating them by 13 points at their own place.
The one thing about tonight’s game that really surprised me was Beilein’s decision to play man-to-man the entire second half. If somebody would have told me West Virginia was going to play the entire second half in man-to-man defense I would have told them they’re nuts. But that’s why West Virginia has one of the best coaches in the country in John Beilein. He knows how to make adjustments and he’s not afraid to make them. What did the man to man do? It took Georgetown’s 7-foot center Roy Hibbert out of the game and they had to play Jeff Green to the hole. Yes, he beat Pittsnogle a couple of times to the basket for dunks but all in all, WVU’s on-ball defense was good, Georgetown missed some shots on the perimeter, and the Mountaineers did a great job of not letting the Hoyas get second shots. They only got one the entire second half.
When you look back on the season this may be one of the more special wins in a year full of special victories. There is still a lot of basketball left but this is a win committees will look at favorably. Georgetown is not a sleeper anymore: this is one of basketball’s elite teams.
One final important point about tonight’s game was the tremendous turnout of West Virginia fans at the MCI Center. You could feel their presence tonight and you could see the team feeding off of them. Had our fans not been spread out all over the arena but instead all together, it would have been a very, very strong section of West Virginia people. We felt them there Sunday night and I thought their performance was just as impressive as the team wearing the Gold and Blue uniforms on the basketball court.
