Beasts are in the East
March 20, 2006 09:21 AM | General
March 20, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – All of the NCAA tournament second-round games are finished and don’t look now, but here comes the Big East Conference with four teams heading to the “Sweet 16.”
The Big East got a record eight teams into the tournament and after a disappointing first day that saw tournament champion Syracuse, Marquette and Seton Hall each fail to advance, the conference has come back to make a strong statement since. Overall the Big East is now 9-4 in this year’s NCAA tournament.
No. 1-seeded Connecticut and Villanova survived to advance to the round of 16, the Huskies outlasting Kentucky and Villanova getting by Arizona. UConn will take on the Washington Huskies in the Washington, D.C. Regional, while Villanova will battle former Big East member Boston College in the Minneapolis Regional. Georgetown had an easy time with Big Ten regular season champion Ohio State on Sunday and will play the other game in Minneapolis against Florida.
West Virginia got past a pesky Northwestern State team, which upset Big Ten tournament champion Iowa in a first round game; the Mountaineers will take on Texas in the Atlanta Regional.
The Big East had an opportunity to have a fifth team make the “Sweet 16” but Pitt was upset by 13th-seeded Bradley, 72-66, earlier today in Auburn Hills, Mich.
Other conferences with multiple teams in the “Sweet 16” are the MVC (Wichita State and Bradley), the ACC (Duke and Boston College), SEC (Florida and LSU) and the Pac 10 (UCLA and Washington).
Conferences with single teams still alive are the Big 12 (Texas), Conference-USA (Memphis), West Coast (Gonzaga) and Patriot (George Mason).
Noticeably absent is the Big Ten, which some Midwest pundits were calling the top basketball conference in the country.
Tournament Notebook:
“Without Coach Beilein and all of the assistants we have on our staff we wouldn’t be as good as we are,” Gansey said. “For us to go back-to-back Sweet 16s since Jerry West I think that says a lot and hopefully we’ll go down as one of the more popular teams in West Virginia University history.”
West Virginia’s last three NCAA tournament appearances (1998, 2005 and 2006) have resulted in trips to the “Sweet 16.”
“We were just trying to win everyday at practice so I can’t say I ever thought about (getting to back-to-back Sweet 16s),” said Beilein. “But to get to this point it’s very rewarding.”
“They had had gotten bad fouls and as a coach you get frustrated with your freshmen and sophomores (for making bad fouls) and we had seniors doing it,” Beilein said. “It was the only mistakes they made but they were three really bad fouls.
“At about the 4-minute mark when we put them all back in I said, ‘You owe everybody and you’ve got to play great basketball these last 4 minutes.’”
Nichols had the shot of the game hitting a half-court 3-point basket ahead of the halftime buzzer to put West Virginia up by 22, 41-19.
“I think all those guys on the bench have done a great job giving us a lift,” said J.D. Collins. “That why we are such a special team because anybody can step up on any night.”
In the meantime, in two tournament games Gansey has made 8 of 19 from the floor for 21 points and Pittsnogle is 10 of 29 for 32 points.
“If we’re not going to play at a 100 percent we’ve got to take ourselves out because we’ve got great guys on the bench and it’s all about the team effort,” said Gansey.
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| West Virginia's Frank Young has scored 18 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in two NCAA tournament games so far.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
On the flip side, West Virginia’s defense has permitted its two opponents to make just 41 of 101 (40.6 percent) while forcing 39 turnovers.
“Our man-to-man defense has won a lot of games for us this year: it’s not just the 1-3-1 and our 3-point shooting winning games for us,” said Young. <>P>
