Georgetown Dunks WVU
March 14, 2008 09:06 PM | General
March 14, 2008
BOX SCORE
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Roy Hibbert didn’t score a basket in Georgetown’s 19-point Big East Tournament quarterfinal victory over Villanova Thursday afternoon. He made up for it today in the semifinals by scoring 25 points to lead No. 1-seeded Georgetown to a 72-55 win over West Virginia to advance to tomorrow night’s championship game.
Georgetown (27-4) used 17 3-point field goals in the Villanova win. The Hoyas chose to go inside against the much smaller Mountaineers where Hibbert was 12 of 17 from the floor while grabbing 13 rebounds – 10 on the offensive end. The Hoyas had a 46-8 advantage in points in the paint and had a 40-22 advantage on the glass including 17 offensive rebounds.
"I was expecting us to guard him a little better than what he we did, but he had a heck of a game," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. "He played very well. He played aggressively."
Jessie Sapp added 13 on 6 of 11 shooting. Georgetown shot 53.3 percent and limited the Mountaineers to just 20 of 49 for 40.8 percent.
West Virginia (24-10) fought hard but ran out of gas midway through the second half, going on an eight-minute scoreless stretch after pulling to within four, 51-47. In the meantime, the Hoyas went on a 16-0 run to put the game away.
Georgetown’s biggest lead was 20 with 3:44 left. West Virginia trailed by 12, 33-21, at halftime.
Da’Sean Butler led the Mountaineers with 16 points on 6 of 9 shooting. Joe Alexander, who scored 56 points in West Virginia’s previous two tournament games against Providence and Connecticut, was held to 12 points on 5 of 16 shooting. Georgetown was rotating players on Alexander, forcing him to take many difficult shots that did not fall tonight.
After a rough shooting start, guard Alex Ruoff finished with 12 points including three 3-point field goals.
"I wasn't making shots that I've normally been making lately. But it was due to stuff they were doing differently," Alexander said. "They were having guys from the weak side coming and helping me when I was driving, sometimes doubling in the post. So they did a good job."
The Hoyas have won seven straight and 14 of their last 16 games and improve to 14-0 in Big East Tournament games as a No. 1 seed. The Hoyas beat West Virginia 58-57 in a controversial finish in Morgantown on Jan. 26.
Georgetown will play Pittsburgh in the championship game Saturday night at 9 pm.
West Virginia was making its second Big East Tournament semifinal appearance since joining the Big East in 1996.
"We're going to be fine. We're very young. That's what I think people don't realize. We've got two seniors and two juniors and the rest of our guys are sophomores, red-shirt freshmen or freshmen," Huggins said. "And we have intensity, I think, and I think young guys do. You maybe get satisfied sometimes when you really don't deserve to be satisfied. And we just don't, you know, we can't go very deep on the bench."
The Mountaineers are likely to get an NCAA Tournament bid on Sunday evening when the pairings are announced.
