Basketball Notebook
January 15, 2009 10:51 AM | General
January 15, 2009
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Freshman guard Truck Bryant showed the ability to bounce back after last Saturday’s scoreless, four-turnover performance against Marquette by producing a season-high 22 points against Marshall to earn Chesapeake Energy Capital Classic game MVP honors.
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| Freshman Truck Bryant scored 22 points Wednesday night against Marshall to earn Chseapeake Energy Capital Classic MVP honors.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
Of course, Marshall guards Damier Pitts and Chris Lutz are not in the same category as Marquette’s Dominic James and Wesley Matthews.
“It’s hard when you have a game like the one I had last game and to come out and bounce back … I did it tonight and we got the win and it was good for the team,” Bryant said. “We’ve just got to get better.”
Bryant said he was just happy to be back out on the floor
“I just wanted to play against anybody, especially after the last game,” Bryant admitted.
“They like to play back and forth. They have a whole bunch of guys who like to push the ball in transition and they definitely try to beat you down the court and get you so worried about them going to the basket and they kick out for 3s,” Butler said. “They have two great 3-point shooters.”
Alex Ruoff was disappointed that the Mountaineers allowed Marshall to score 53 second-half points after holding the Herd to only 23 first-half points on 37 percent shooting.
“Giving up 53 points in the second half is a problem so we’ve got to be ready to get back to work and concentrate on guarding the ball,” Ruoff said. “They really broke us down defensively in the second half one-on-one and we didn’t get the stops that we needed.”
“It’s always good when guys are making shots,” Ruoff said. “I think we came out after halftime and made like four straight 3s or something like that. We have got to be able to correct (the poor shooting) and keep playing hard.”
“I felt like we moved the ball more and we got a lot of people involved,” added freshman forward Kevin Jones. “If we keep doing that I think we can be a great offensive team.”
When a player is shooting 11 percent from the foul line the issues are well beyond being technical.
“I don’t like it when it gets out of control and the fans are out of it. Last year when the game was close you can’t replace that kind of atmosphere. I love that portion of it,” Ruoff said. “When it comes to the behind-the-scenes stuff if we lose … it doesn’t sit right with me. The young guys don’t know how important this game is for the tournament.”
Kevin Jones agrees.
“I know it has been a great rivalry over the years and I was just glad to be a part of it,” Jones said. “The atmosphere was really intense.”
Although he didn't bring up the topic, Marshall coach Donnie Jones has a different take on the game being played annually in Charleston.
“Obviously it would be great for us to be able to get a game like this at home. I think it would be good for both to be able to do that – if we went home and home and then alternate in Charleston,” Jones said. “We do it in football. I don’t know why we don’t do it in basketball?”
The reason the game is played annually in Charleston is simple: it is profitable for both schools. Once again, more than 12,000 showed up for Wednesday night’s game. Jones also is too young or too detached to recall the ugliness that marred the series when the two schools played home and home, especially the games played in Huntington.
Charleston is the perfect place for this series to be played. Besides, Marshall can hop on a bus and be back on their campus in 45 minutes.
“They are an unusual team and we don’t see a lot of teams like that with the way they guard and switch. They do a lot of different things that we are not accustomed to,” Jones explained. “We have a lot of new guys that haven’t seen that. We knew it was going to happen and I was ready to go with four guards if we had to but it was a disadvantage on the other end because of rebounding.”
“That was a long second half. If felt like it was 40 minutes,” said Ruoff.
Actually it was about two hours.
Kevin Jones said what he is discovering is that to win in the Big East you have to play your hardest each time out.
“You have to play hard every single minute you are on the floor because you don’t know when you are going to get on the floor again,” Jones said.
“Losing is not fun. When you are in class thinking about what happened you’re just depressed. When you come to practice that’s all you’re thinking about,” Ruoff said. “To bounce back and get a win (Wednesday) is great for us. We hope it would have been a little bit neater and cleaner because it was very sloppy, but it was good.”
According to RealTime RPI.com, the Thundering Herd’s RPI is 134 following Wednesday’s loss to West Virginia. Marshall has C-USA games coming up at Tulsa on Saturday and at home next Wednesday against SMU.
