Knights Erased
February 14, 2008 09:45 PM | General
February 14, 2008
BOX SCORE | PHOTO GALLERY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Joe Alexander scored 15 points and grabbed 10 rebounds to lead West Virginia to an 81-63 victory over Rutgers Thursday night at the WVU Coliseum.
Alexander was one of five double-figure scorers for West Virginia, which scored its most points since putting 81 on the scoreboard in a 20-point victory over Syracuse back on Jan. 13 at the Coliseum.
“We were up 7-4 and the reality is we probably should have been up 18-4,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “Alex got two great looks to start the game and didn’t hit either one of them; Da’Sean had a two-footer that didn’t go in. I thought we had really good looks to start the game. We were going to run four things and three of them were really out of the same set and I thought we got great shots out of them.”
Alex Ruoff scored 14 points and Wellington Smith came off the bench to contribute 14 points and grab eight rebounds in 27 minutes of action.
“Wellington Smith is getting better and better and he was really active today,” said Huggins. “I think this was as active as Joe Alexander has been in a long, long time and when those two guys are active they’re pretty efficient.”
Da’Sean Butler also reached double figures with 12 points while Jamie Smalligan gave the Mountaineers a big boost with 10 points, including five of the first seven points of the game for WVU.
“We told (Jamie) we ran the back screen play to Darris and they were drop the guy back in there and help and Darris did a great job of kicking it back out to Jamie,” Huggins said. “Jamie is shooting the ball better and I thought he was active. I’ve seen him enough to know how much better he’s gotten and how hard he’s worked at getting better.”
West Virginia (17-7, 6-5) committed just four turnovers tying the Coliseum record for fewest turnovers last done on Feb. 5, 2005, in an 83-78 win over Pitt.
The Mountaineers led by 15 at halftime and built an 18-point second-half lead before Rutgers began chipping away. The Scarlet Knights got the deficit down to 10, 61-51, with 8:02 remaining following a three-point play by Hamady Ndiaye.
Trailing by 12, 65-53, Rutgers couldn’t get it below double digits mainly because of turnovers. Earl Pettis’ sixth turnover of the game with 3:45 left caused a frustrated Scarlet Knights coach Fred Hill to kick the rotating sign on press row and draw a technical foul.
Ruoff made both free throws to begin an 8-0 run to push the lead back out to 20. The Mountaineers had a 29-2 advantage in points off of turnovers.
Rutgers had 17 turnovers for the game to offset a decent shooting night, particularly from 3 where it finished 7 of 16 for 43.8 percent.
Rutgers, 10-16, 2-11, got 10 points from four different players.
The Mountaineers had a 35-32 edge on the glass and shot 41.9 percent from the floor, although they managed just 6 of 21 from 3 for 28.6 percent.
“When we start shooting them in we’ll be pretty good,” Huggins said.
The Mountaineers were 23 of 26 from the free throw line, a dramatic improvement over last week’s 7-of-17 performance in a one-point loss at Pitt.
A crowd of just 7,826 was announced for tonight’s game with a good portion of the WVU student section empty.
“Let’s get them in here because we’re getting ready to make a run and have some fun,” Huggins said.
West Virginia returns to the Coliseum to face Seton Hall Sunday afternoon at 2 pm.
“Seton Hall is going to be hard – it’s the same thing, you’ve got to guard the dribble,” Huggins said. “They play basically four guards but a couple of them are big, strong kids that can guard in the post. It’s going to be a good challenge for us on Sunday.”
