Battling the Buckeyes
December 26, 2008 10:13 AM | General
December 26, 2008
OHIO STATE GAME NOTES
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The way Bob Huggins sees it, if his West Virginia team can somehow pull off a win Saturday afternoon at No. 15 Ohio State then he won’t have to listen to a certain ESPN commentator complain about his team’s unspectacular NCAA Tournament resume.
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| Kevin Jones and John Flowers celebrate West Virginia's win over Miami last Saturday.
AP photo |
“I told our guys that I’d like to beat somebody ranked so I wouldn’t have to listen to Doug Gottlieb talk about us not having a quality win,” Huggins said. “That kind of grates me.”
The Mountaineers (9-2) have performed solidly in their first 11 games so far this year with losses coming against just Kentucky and Davidson. West Virginia had good opportunities to win both games before blowing a double-digit lead against Kentucky in Las Vegas and letting a late four-point lead slip away against Davidson in the Jimmy V Classic without starting guards Joe Mazzulla and Alex Ruoff. Ruoff, who scored a career-high 38 points on Tuesday night against Radford, has since returned to the starting lineup.
Ohio State (9-0) heads into Saturday’s game with the nation’s longest winning streak at 14 games. The Buckeyes won last year’s NIT before reeling off nine straight wins to begin 2008.
Coach Thad Matta has a pair of talented big men in 6-foot-8-inch, 250-pound sophomore Dallas Lauderdale and 7-foot freshman center B.J. Mullens, a top target of the pro scouts.
Mullens came off the bench in Ohio State’s 83-59 victory over UNC Asheville last Monday and responded with a season-high 19 points. Lauderdale also comes off the bench to average 8 points and 4.9 rebounds per game.
Mullens and Lauderdale combined to go 13 of 17 from the floor to score 30 points against UNC Asheville Monday night.
Sophomore Evan Turner leads the Buckeyes with averages of 16.9 points and 6.8 rebounds per game. The 6-7 forward is shooting 55.4 percent from the floor and has also produced a team-high 26 steals.
“They’re playing really well,” Huggins said. “They have two bigs in Mullens and Lauderdale, Turner has played really well for them and (Jon) Diebler has played well for them. They’ve got great depth. It’s nice to bring McDonald’s All-Americans off the bench.
“They play a 1-2-2 match up,” said Huggins. “They’ll 2-2-1 three-quarter court press you and back up into the 1-2-2. They do a great job of matching up out of it.”
West Virginia is coming off an 89-54 win over Radford last Tuesday night. The Mountaineers got a school-record nine 3-point field goals from Alex Ruoff to boost his season scoring average to 17 points per game.
Huggins was pleased with his team’s performance against Radford’s two big guys inside in a warm up for what his team will face on Saturday against Mullens and Lauderdale.
“We thought going in that these two were the most physical post players that we’ve played against,” Huggins said. “That’s good for us. We had to compensate for their size and I thought by and large we did a pretty good job.”
Junior forward Da'Sean Butler shows averages of 15.5 points and 6.2 rebounds per game, while freshman guard Truck Bryant has scored double figures in nine of his first 12 college games and owns an 11.3-points-per-game average. Bryant left the Radford game in the second half when he landed awkwardly on his ankle and did not return. Joe Mazzulla, WVU’s other starting point guard, has been out since the Davidson game with a shoulder injury.
The Mountaineers also start 6-9 freshman Devin Ebanks, who shows averages of 7.5 points and 6.7 rebounds per game. Ebanks has pulled down 10 or more rebounds in four of his last five games.
Six-foot-eight-inch freshman Kevin Jones is a key contributor coming off the bench with averages of 5.9 points and 4.5 rebounds per game.
“I don’t know if there is a team in the country that is getting more out of their freshmen than we are,” Huggins said.
Bob Huggins makes his Buckeye State return after starring at Indian Valley South High School playing for his father Charlie Huggins, and later coaching Cincinnati to the Final Four in 1992.
Huggins also has Ohio State ties having served as a graduate assistant coach on Eldon Miller’s staff for two seasons from 1978-80. Huggins’ Cincinnati teams never faced Ohio State but the veteran coach twice hooked up against the Buckeyes when he coached at Akron, losing both games.
Huggins and Matta have similar backgrounds coaching against each other when Matta was at Xavier and Huggins was at Cincinnati. Huggins is 2-1 against Matta with Matta’s lone win coming at Xavier in 2004.
“Thad didn’t start at Walsh,” Huggins pointed out. “Thad was at Butler for one year and then Xavier. That’s hardly Walsh and Akron.”
CBS will televise the game nationally. MSN’s pre-game coverage begins at 3:30 with the Coliseum Countdown. Tip off is set for 4 pm.
