Arizona Preview
March 19, 2008 08:00 PM | General
March 19, 2008
WASHINGTON, D.C. – West Virginia’s Bob Huggins and Arizona’s Kevin O’Neill will get reacquainted Thursday night at the Verizon Center when the No. 7-seeded Mountaineers take on the No. 10 seed Wildcats in an NCAA Tournament first-round game.
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| Bob Huggins talks to reporters at Wednesday's news conference at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
The West Virginia-Arizona game will tip at approximately 9:40 p.m. following the first game of the evening session featuring Duke and Belmont.
Arizona (19-14) is making its 24th consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance and 27th overall. The Wildcats have done so without veteran coach Lute Olson, who has taken a year’s leave of absence. O’Neill has stepped in and led the Wildcats to a seventh place finish in the Pac 10 this season.
“Kevin does a great job,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “They’re going to come out and be physical. They’re going to come out and try to play man to man and take you out of things.”
O’Neill has been at Arizona for four seasons as Olson’s top assistant after spending seven years in the NBA. Prior to that Huggins and O’Neill used to hook up when O’Neill was at Marquette and Huggins coached at Cincinnati in Conference USA. Huggins is 7-1 against O’Neill in those meetings.
“Kevin and I coached against each other a lot,” Huggins said. “Basically he’s a man-to-man guy and his teams are always very physical. He played a lot of three-out, two-in. I think in his five, six or seven years in the NBA, I think he’s brought a lot of the quick-hitter things they run in the NBA – a lot of buddy screening, stagger screens – run a lot of things similar to when you see the (Detroit) Pistons play.”
Six-foot-three-inch freshman guard Jerryd Bayless has benefited greatly from O’Neill’s wide-open style, averaging 20.3 points per game in becoming one of the nation’s premiere guards. Bayless earned second-team All-America honors from Sports Illustrated and was a second-team all-Pac 10 selection.
Bayless poured in a season-high 39 points against Arizona State and has topped 30 points in a game four times this year.
Six-foot-seven-inch sophomore forward Chase Budinger shows averages of 17 points and 5.4 rebounds per game, while 6-10 sophomore forward Jordan Hill is averaging 13.2 points and 7.8 rebounds per game. Guard Nic Wise is also back in the lineup after missing five weeks with a knee injury.
“Obviously he makes them a lot better because he can make shots and he runs,” Huggins said. “He gets those other guys off the ball.”
Arizona is averaging 72.1 points per game and prefers to get out in the open court and play transition basketball.
“The transition game, some of the teams in the Big East, like Connecticut, they get out and run,” said West Virginia guard Alex Ruoff. “(Arizona) likes to run a lot of pro sets, a lot of isolation sets for their two big-time players.”
West Virginia (24-10) has a big-time player of its own in junior forward Joe Alexander, who has boosted his scoring average to 16.8 points per game after a torrid six-game stretch at the end of the season. Alexander has scored 161 points during that span of games.
“He’s kind of the focus of our offense,” admitted senior guard Darris Nichols. “We’re just trying to concentrate on him. And the teams have been doubling him and you’ve got to make the focus on him.”
The Mountaineers have four starters averaging double figures. Forward Da’Sean Butler averages 12.8 points and 6.1 rebounds, Ruoff averages 13.5 points and Nichols averages 10.9 points per game.
“They all understand sharing the ball and they understand who is playing great,” said O’Neill. “If somebody is hot they don’t mind giving the ball up and making the extra pass.”
West Virginia and Arizona are meeting for the fifth time overall and the first time since 1992 when the Wildcats claimed a 75-74 victory over the Mountaineers in the Fiesta Bowl Classic.
Huggins is 0-2 against Arizona with one of those losses coming in NCAA Tournament play.
West Virginia’s is making its 21st NCAA Tournament appearance and the third in the last four years. Last season the Mountaineers claimed their second NIT title and reached the Elite Eight in 2005 and the Sweet 16 in 2006.
