WVU in NIT Title Game
March 28, 2007 10:14 PM | General
March 28, 2007
GAME NOTES | PHOTO GALLERY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – It’s been 65 years since West Virginia University last played in the NIT championship game, winning the tournament in 1942. Thursday night at Madison Square Garden the Mountaineers can get their second NIT championship banner if it can knock off slightly favored Clemson.
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| West Virginia forward Frank Young listens to a question during Wednesday morning's NIT press conference in New York City.
All-Pro Photography Dale Sparks |
“It would be great to have that banner – for these kids to have that type of championship,” said West Virginia coach John Beilein. “Only two teams are going to end their season with a win and we’d like to be the other one. At the same time, there is no way anyone is going to take anything away from these guys if the breaks do not go our way and Clemson is the victor.”
The Tigers (25-10), searching for their first NIT crown, got to the title game by knocking off East Tennessee State, Mississippi and Syracuse at home before getting past Air Force 68-67 Tuesday night in the NIT semifinals.
Clemson has five players averaging double figures led by 6-5 sophomore guard K.C. Rivers who averages 13.9 points per contest. Rivers was the leading scorer in Clemson’s victory over Air Force, scoring a game-high 19 points on 5 of 10 shooting from 3. Rivers is Clemson’s first sub off the bench replacing junior Sam Perry.
Six-nine, 225-pound junior forward James Mays averages 12.3 points and 6.5 rebounds per game, shooting 47.7 percent from the field. Six-seven freshman forward Trevor Booker is shooting a team-best 60.2 percent from the field and is averaging 10.2 points per game.
“We know we have an opponent in Clemson that was rated in the Top 10 at one point this year and they beat a very good Air Force team (Tuesday night),” Beilein said. “They certainly looked like a Top 10 team against Air Force.”
Clemson got a preview of West Virginia’s unique offensive system playing the Falcons, but both Beilein and Clemson coach Oliver Purnell agree that West Virginia’s system is unique all to itself.
“They’re definitely different but there are some similarities: you have some backdoor cutting, they move the ball; they like the high-post action,” said Purnell.
“The comparison between our offenses is Japanese and Chinese,” Beilein added. “It looks somewhat the same but unless you really understand it there are not a lot of similarities.”
Beilein and Purnell have a history coaching against each other when both were in the Atlantic 10 Conference – Purnell with Dayton and Beilein with Richmond.
“We played at least three times if not four,” Purnell said. “I can remember we played in the NIT in the first round and, in fact, they may have still been in the Colonial when we first played them and then they came into the A-10 the next year. We played them in Dayton in the NIT and we beat them pretty good.
“The next year at Dayton we beat them handily as well and then we went to Richmond and they beat us handily,” Purnell said. “We must have beaten them like 25 with the same team and he made some adjustments with the 1-3-1 and I think we got beat by like 15.”
Purnell recalls Beilein’s Richmond teams being difficult to prepare for.
“Just watching him make adjustments during the game and obviously studying the 1-3-1 and watching their offense back when he was at Richmond and they hardly had any post players,” Purnell said. “But yet he found a way to use the dribble-drive penetration. In fact, in our offense we’ve got a screen we call the Richmond Screen. That name came from his screens at Richmond.”
Purnell believes West Virginia’s willingness to drive to the basket is what turned around Tuesday night’s game against Mississippi when the Mountaineers were trailing by 14 in the second half.
“They go to their driving game and that’s one of those things that people don’t recognize until it’s too late,” said Purnell. “You’re waiting for screens, backdoors and all that and they’re just driving. I thought they did that to Mississippi State: they went to their driving game and that really got them back into the game.”
Darris Nichols’ 3-point jump shot from the corner as time expired gave West Virginia at 63-62 come-from-behind victory over the Bulldogs.
It was West Virginia’s 26th victory in what was supposed to have been a rebuilding season. It is the third-most victories in school history and the most by any John Beilein-coached basketball team.
“Go back to the Mount St. Mary’s game. We felt good that we were going to get better but 26 (wins) is probably a surprise,” Beilein admitted.
Beilein has been involved in many memorable games the last five years and he says Tuesday night’s last-second victory ranks right up there among the best.
“I get hundreds of emails these last couple of years about where they were, how they were watching and the 88-year-old grandmother who said she hadn’t stayed up past 10 o’clock since her husband died 20 years ago telling me that she watched the whole Wake Forest game until 12:30.
“That’s how you get a sense and I would think (Tuesday night’s) game would be no different,” Beilein said.
An NIT championship victory over an outstanding Clemson basketball team would certainly add to the West Virginia basketball lore.
Tip off is scheduled for 7 pm. The game will be televised nationally on ESPN.
