Mountaineers Roll
December 22, 2007 06:48 PM | General
December 22, 2007
BOX SCORE
BUFFALO, N.Y. – West Virginia’s Bob Huggins joined an elite group of coaches by earning his 600th career victory Saturday afternoon following his team's 77-54 victory over Canisius at HSBC Arena in Buffalo, N.Y.
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| Joe Alexander drives to the basket for two of his game-high 20 points in West Virginia's 77-54 win over Canisius.
AP photo |
Huggins is one of just six active coaches with at least 600 victories and becomes just the 29th coach in NCAA history to reach the milestone.
“It means I’m old,” Huggins said after the game. “It’s a wonderful tribute to the wonderful guys I’ve had over the years. You don’t average whatever it is – 23 or 24 wins - over your career unless you’ve got good players. Not just good players but guys that play together, care about each other; guys that are willing to make some sacrifices for the good of the team.
“I’ve been blessed. There are not many people out there that can say they coached the consensus national player of the year which I had the good fortune of doing with Kenyon Martin,” Huggins said. “I saw a guy in Steve Logan who came in at 222 pounds, played at 184, and in my mind was the national player of the year for what he did that year with our team.
“We’re going to do the same thing here,” Huggins said. “Joe Alexander gets better and better. I thought Joe stayed with things pretty well and that was a hard game for somebody like Joe to play.”
Alexander finished with a game-high 20 points and also grabbed six boards. Alex Ruoff scored 14 on 4 of 6 shooting from 3 and Da’Sean Butler added 10 points and four rebounds.
Huggins joins an active list of coaches with 600 career wins that includes Bob Knight, Lute Olson, Mike Krzyewski, Jim Boeheim and Jim Calhoun.
“Those guys should all be drawing Social Security,” Huggins joked.
Canisius (1-10) chose to spread the floor and run clock and the game soon turned into a free throw shooting contest. By halftime the two teams had more combined fouls (21) than field goals made (17).
Forty four combined fouls were called in the game.
West Virginia (10-1) took control after the 7-minute media timeout, going on a 7-0 run to make take a 21-12 lead. A 3 from the wing by Ruoff and a Butler reverse lay up gave West Virginia a 12-point, 26-14 lead with 2:43 left in the half.
The Mountaineers led at the break 33-17.
West Virginia’s biggest lead was 27, 66-39, following an Alexander reverse lay up. West Virginia outscored Canisius 44-37 in the second half.
WVU came into the game leading the country in scoring margin at plus-29.4. Eight of the Mountaineers’ 10 wins this year have come by 20 points or more.
West Virginia shot 50 percent, 26 of 52, had a 36-20 edge on the glass and blocked six shots.
“I thought we played pretty well really,” Huggins said. “That’s hard to play like that and I thought we sustained our intensity pretty good. We didn’t shoot particularly well for us. We missed some shots we normally don’t miss.”
Pawel Malesa scored 16 points and Frank Turner added 15 for Canisius.
West Virginia gets a week off for Christmas and will resume play against Oklahoma in Charleston on Saturday, Dec. 29, at the Charleston Civic Center. Yesterday the game was announced as a sell out. ESPN2 will televise the game nationally.
