March 24-31 Blog
March 24, 2008 01:59 PM | General
We’re changing things up a little bit. For the past four years Campus Connection has kind of been like a weekly blog full of tidbits, notes, commentary, quasi-opinion and weak stabs at humor that have sometimes hit the mark and at other times completely missed. Well, to keep up with the Jones', we’ve decided to turn Campus Connection into a daily blog. If we miss a day then you know we’re struggling.
Hope you enjoy it ...
Baseball's Torrid Start
Posted By John Antonik: March 26, 2008 (10:49 am)
West Virginia’s baseball team has won 11 games in a row and has one of the best records in the country at 19-4. The Mountaineers are 14-1 at Hawley Field and began the Big East season with a three-game home sweep of Pitt.
One of WVU’s best players is also one of the top freshmen in the country in Morgantown’s Jedd Gyorko, the younger brother of former Mountaineer football player Scott Gyorko. Jedd is batting third in a West Virginia lineup that is hitting .364 as a team heading into this weekend’s series at Rutgers.
The Mountaineers are averaging 9 ½ runs per game and the pitching staff has a combined team ERA of 3.49, with Josh Whitlock leading the way with a 5-0 record and a 2.34 earned run average. Opponents are hitting just .238 against West Virginia pitching.
And Coach Greg Van Zant needs only three more victories to reach 400 for his career.
Yet despite the strong start, the Mountaineers still have a relatively low RPI of 95 primarily because of a strength-of-schedule rating of 281.
Rutgers is 0-3 in conference play and 6-12 overall heading into today’s game against Princeton, but the Scarlet Knights always play a strong early season schedule with road games at top southern schools.
We’ll get a better read on this year’s West Virginia team after its series at Rutgers. The Mountaineers have lost 17 straight in Piscataway dating back to an 8-6 victory at Rutgers in 1997.
Sweet 16-BCS Schools
Posted By John Antonik: March 24, 2008 (2:00 pm)
There are 16 teams left in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and only two – West Virginia and Kansas – also played in a BCS bowl game. Kansas beat Virginia Tech 24-21 in the FedEx Orange Bowl and West Virginia drilled Oklahoma 48-28 in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.
The West Virginia men’s basketball team will take on No. 12-rated Xavier in one regional semifinal game in Phoenix while Kansas will face Villanova in the Midwest Regional semifinal in Detroit.
As irony would have it, West Virginia is returning to the city (Phoenix) where it produced one of its most memorable football victories in school history in the 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.
WVU’s other major bowl victory in the Nokia Sugar Bowl came in Atlanta in 2006 and was also followed up by men’s basketball’s Sweet 16 appearance in the Georgia Dome where Texas beat the Mountaineers, 74-71 on a last-second basket.
Some in ACC country are making a big deal out of Joe Alexander’s comments about Duke being no better than some of the other top teams in the Big East. Joe wasn’t taking a shot at the Blue Devils he was simply giving an honest answer to a question he was asked about comparing Duke to some of the other teams in the conference.
I also happen to think he’s correct.
It’s not fair to judge a team after watching them just once in person. However, after seeing them in person twice and also watching Pitt beat the Blue Devils earlier this year in New York City, it’s obvious that this isn’t the same Duke team that dominated college basketball in the 1990s and earlier this decade.
Duke doesn’t have a post presence and while their guards still play the same in-your-face defense the other great Duke teams did, they simply cannot stop dribble penetration. That was evident in the Belmont game and even more so against West Virginia. And when was the last time Duke got pounded by 20 on the glass?
The Blue Devils are still very good, but not quite as good as the Duke teams of five-10 years ago. If Duke played in the Big East I see at least four-five more losses tacked on to its final record.
One final thing to ponder ...
The WVU coaches told their players before Saturday’s game against Duke: play their players - not their jerseys.
Do you think the Queen City is jacked up about Bob Huggins facing Xavier in the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16? I bet the Cincinnati Enquirer sends its entire sports staff down to Phoenix to cover this one. Huggins is 8-9 against the Musketeers including an 8-8 record coaching at Cincinnati.
This probably isn't the case, but I have a hard time calling a team that has won 53 games the last two years a Cinderella. That's a pretty good two-year run.
I can remember not too long ago when West Virginia fans were simply hoping to make it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Do you realize that West Virginia has made it to the Sweet 16 four times since 1998 and three times since 2005?
West Virginia has only advanced that far six times in the history of the school with the other two occasions coming in 1959 (NCAA Finals) and 1963.
In fact, nearly half (nine of 20) of West Virginia’s wins in NCAA Tournament play have come since 1998. The Mountaineers are 9-3 in NCAA play since then.
Darris Nichols is about to break one of Jerry West’s school records. When West Virginia faces Xavier Thursday night, it will be Nichols’ 10th NCAA Tournament appearance, topping the nine NCAA appearances made by West and teammate Willie Akers.
Nichols is 7-2 in NCAA Tournament action. West and Akers finished their WVU careers 6-3 in NCAA play.
