Young not Done
March 18, 2007 01:07 PM | General
March 18, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – If Frank Young is disappointed to be ending his career in the NIT, he sure isn’t playing like it. In two games thus far in the tournament, Young has scored a team-best 47 points on 17 of 24 shooting from the floor including 8 of 11 from 3-point range.
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| Forward Frank Young scored a career-high 31 points to lead West Virginia to a 90-77 NIT second-round victory over Massachusetts last Thursday night at the WVU Coliseum.
AP photo |
On Thursday night against UMass the Tallahassee, Fla., native wowed the 7,146 people on hand at the Coliseum scoring a career-high 31 points on 11 of 15 shooting from the floor including 6 of 8 from downtown to lead the Mountaineers to a 90-77 victory over UMass.
“To his credit our whole game plan was to try and stop him and he still got 30,” said Massachusetts coach Travis Ford. “When the gameplan is to go out there and stop you and you still do it … that’s not easy.”
The performance broke Diego McCoy’s school-record for points in an NIT game. McCoy scored 30 against Tulsa in the 1981 semifinals at Madison Square Garden.
“He only needs one,” West Virginia coach John Beilein said. “When he hits that first shot it really gets him going.”
Young came out ready to play from the opening gun, determined to continue his Mountaineer career.
“I was really focused on the game in warm-ups. I had a good feeling as soon as I hit my first shot,” Young said. “We did a good job of breaking their pressure and getting open shots and my teammates did a really great job of getting me the ball and I was able to knock them down.”
Young scored 18 points in the first half to set the tone for one of his most memorable games in a Gold and Blue uniform.
“He’s the best shooter I’ve seen all year,” Ford said.
It wasn’t just the long ball that Young used to hold the Minutemen at bay. The senior forward hit a variety of mid-range and fade-away jumpers. Young says he has worked diligently to become a well-rounded player offensively.
“That’s something I have been trying to do later in the season, trying to score in different ways,” Young said. “Teams are going to know that I am primarily a 3-point shooter so I have to try to find different ways to score.”
The results speak for themselves.
“I was forcing 3s some earlier but now I am just taking shots that are wide open whether they are 3s or not and I have really been trying to penetrate and kick and also hit the mid-range shot when it’s available,” Young said.
Young’s six 3-pointers moved him into a tie with Chris Leonard for most treys in a season (101). Barring a strange turn of events, Young will become the sole record holder next Tuesday, when the Mountaineers face 20-15 N.C. State at 9 pm in a quarterfinal game at the Coliseum that will be televised on ESPN.
“I didn’t even know I was close to it. It’s a great feeling for me. Having played with guys like Kevin Pittsnogle, it’s a surprise to me,” Young said. “That’s a great honor to go in the record books with some of the greatest that have ever been at this school but a lot of the credit has to go to my teammates for getting me open.”
When it became obvious that conventional defensive tactics wouldn’t slow Young down Thursday night, Minutemen guard James Life resorted to trash talking in an attempt to get the veteran forward off his game.
“We were talking a little bit. I’m not one to really talk unless somebody else starts talking,” Young said. “He was trying to take me out of my game but I was focused and I’m not going to lose my cool in that situation.”
As the verbal battle reached its peak when Life nailed a couple of quick 3s in the second half, Young responded by catching a perfectly thrown baseball pass over his shoulder and laying it in over Life to squelch any momentum UMass had gained.
“I asked him, ‘Where you at now?’” Young said with a laugh.
Right now Life is sitting at home. Young, on the other hand, is in position to lead his team to an NIT championship and in doing so write a few more chapters in one of the most productive careers in West Virginia basketball history.
