UMBC Preview
December 15, 2007 09:27 AM | General
December 15, 2007
GAME NOTES
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia will look to win its 20th consecutive non-conference game at the WVU Coliseum on Saturday when it plays host to Maryland-Baltimore County at 4 p.m. The game follows the women’s contest against Presbyterian which is set to tip-off at 1:30 p.m.
UMBC (7-3), of the America East Conference, employs a three guard offense and is led by a pair of senior guards in Brian Hodges and Ray Barbosa. The 6-3 Hodges leads the Retrievers in scoring, pouring in 18.2 points per game while the 6-2 Barbosa pitches in 16.2 points per contest. Six-four forward Darryl Proctor is also averaging double figures with 14.6 points and a team-best 7.9 rebounds per game.
“They can score. Their perimeter guys are very good,” West Virginia Coach Bob Huggins said.
The Mountaineers have been idle for final exams since their 92-68 victory over Duquesne last Saturday at the Coliseum.
“We took Sunday and Monday off and we had individuals on Tuesday and then we went Wednesday for a couple hours and Thursday morning for a couple hours,” Huggins said. “We just haven’t been on the floor as much. We had to go at 7:30 in the morning on Thursday because the guys had finals all day. (Friday) was the first day we got back to having a normal practice.”
West Virginia (7-1) now has three players averaging double figures led by Alex Ruoff’s 16.5 per game average. Joe Alexander is next at 15.8 and also leads the team in rebounding, pulling down seven caroms per game. Da’Sean Butler averages 12.9 points per game while Darris Nichols just misses double figures with 9.6 points per outing.
Having that many offensive options makes WVU a harder team to defend because opposing teams never know where the scoring is going to come from on a given night.
“In a lot of ways it’s harder to prepare. Da’Sean’s had some good games and some big games and I think everybody understands Darris is capable of having a big game,” Huggins said. “I think it helps guys like Alex (Ruoff). It is harder to find him because they are so worried about the other people.”
While West Virginia leads the country in scoring margin (30.1) and has posted the two largest margins of victory in Coliseum history this season, Huggins believes his teams still have a ways to go on the offensive end of the floor.
“We’ve got to get to where we’ve got more options and can do more things out of motion. We are just kind of doing the same things all the time,” Huggins said. “We have worked on some other things a little bit but we just haven’t worked on it enough.”
Time has been limited due to the amount of games the Mountaineers have played. While the players are now off for break, there are still many games to prepare for over the holidays.
“We haven’t put a lot of things in offensively because we haven’t had time. We play Wednesday and we play Saturday and we have to make sure we’re ready for every game,” Huggins said. “I don’t really know anything about Radford or Canisius but we’re going to have to go over what they do and make sure we’re really prepared to handle what they do from an offensive and a defensive standpoint.”
Huggins also noted that the game preparation gives his team a bigger frame of reference with which to make in-game adjustments. While it is important to get a read on what other teams are doing, Huggins is more interested in the reads his players make when they have the basketball.
“Basketball comes down to basically three guys. There is a guy screening, a guy using a screen and then somebody has to figure out where to throw the ball. We haven’t had three guys on the same page a lot of times,” Huggins said.
Today’s game will be West Virginia’s second ever meeting with UMBC. The Mountaineers defeated the Terriers 82-53 on Dec. 7, 2005. WVU is 5-0 all-time against teams from the America East Conference.
This will be the last pay-per-view game broadcast on MSNsportsNET.com this season. The game can be accessed for $11.95 and CSTV All-Access monthly and yearly subscribers do not have access to this service.
