Benign Notre Dame Observations

Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2009
(11:45 am)

Some benign observations from the concourse after watching West Virginia get a rare win over Notre Dame ...


	West Virginia coach Bob Huggins has now moved past Hugh Durham into 26th place in all-time wins with 634. All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo

More so than even Connecticut and Pitt, the one team that has been a thorn in West Virginia’s side the last five or six years is Notre Dame. Before tonight’s 11-point victory (which was much tougher than it probably should have been), West Virginia had dropped 13 of its last 14 games to the Irish. Notre Dame coach Mike Brey was 11-1 against the Mountaineers before tonight’s contest with his only defeat coming by one point at the Coliseum three years ago in 2006. If memory serves me correctly, Notre Dame had a chance to win the game but missed a shot at the buzzer.

I bet you before Huggs got to Morgantown Brey spent his summers lobbying the Big East to get the Mountaineers as one of their three home-and-homes for the year. I know I would have been.

I’m sure the Domers that were here tonight left the arena upset that Luke Harangody was getting abused by West Virginia’s tag-team tandem of Wellington Smith, Cam Thoroughman, John Flowers and Kevin Jones. But the reality is this: nearly all of the contact is initiated by Harangody.

In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that Harangody and DeJuan Blair are the two players in the Big East that start each game with seven fouls. I’ve seen both of them foul out twice in games this year. Then you look at the box score and you see that they only have two fouls, like tonight.

Both are excellent players, though, and I know everyone would line up and take those two in a heartbeat. Even though Notre Dame is just three games over .500, Harangody is still neck-and-neck with Blair for Big East player of the year honors. Connecticut’s Hasheem Thabeet probably played his way out of contention last Monday night with the loss to Pitt.

The Villanova win last Friday now becomes even more important with tonight’s victory over Notre Dame. If West Virginia had stumbled against the 14-11 Irish that would have effectively canceled out the Villanova win, and we would have had to listen to Digger Phelps talk all weekend about the Irish being back on the bubble.

“Now if we go up to Rutgers on Sunday and we don’t play then all of this is for naught,” warned Huggins after the game. “It’s an every day deal.”

Before the season, most people in the conference thought that Notre Dame and West Virginia had the two toughest league schedules. It now appears to be true. Notre Dame’s doubles are against Connecticut, Louisville and St. John’s while West Virginia’s doubles are against Pitt, Louisville and South Florida.

Bob Huggins knows how to stop people. When Notre Dame was scoring at will in the first half against West Virginia’s half-court man-to-man, Huggins went to his bag of tricks with a 1-3-1 zone that former coach John Beilein once used so effectively at West Virginia.

Huggins said his team spent about 10 minutes working on the three-zone during practice this week with Ruoff playing in the back.

“When I watched tape last year I noticed that (1-3-1 zone) kind of slowed them down a little bit,” Huggins said. “They were on such a roll I thought we had to do something just to change tempo.

“Even though Alex had never played in the back he knows what he’s doing. And then we just tried to coach Devin (Ebanks) and Kevin (Jones) through it,” Huggins said. “Da’ (Butler) knew what he was doing and Wellington knew what he was doing.”

That lineup of Ruoff, Butler, Ebanks, Smith and Jones – all 6-6 to 6-9 players – turned the game around for West Virginia.

Do you think Devin Ebanks and Kevin Jones are starting to get the hang of things? The two combined to score 23 points and grab 19 rebounds Wednesday night against Notre Dame. And just wait until Andy Kettler gets his hands on them after the season.

Notre Dame sure knows how to activate their sleeper cells. There was a lot of green and gold walking around the Coliseum at tonight’s game. One kid who was wearing Notre Dame stuff I am almost positive I have seen wandering around the Coliseum looking for room 100 (that happens to be the Coliseum floor if you were wandering).

I mentioned to someone next to me that Harangody was getting away with murder in the lane and before you knew it the kid jumped right into the conversation with something smart to say to me.

I told him to either take the bus back to Indiana and shovel some snow or to make sure he got up early for class on Thursday morning.

Also, one of my long-lost high school teachers emailed out of the blue asking if I still had my four comp tickets for the Notre Dame game. I didn't get a chance to see whether or not he was decked out in West Virginia gear, but I have my suspicions.

Huggs had nothing but praise for West Virginia’s student section tonight. The entire section was full and he thought they played a big roll in pumping life into the team when it was struggling early.

“They were phenomenal,” Huggins said. “I’ve been on them a little but they were great tonight – and we needed them. I thought the entire crowd was phenomenal. Either the old folks gave their tickets to someone else or they actually stood up and cheered – I’m not sure which it was.”

Huggins said the atmosphere tonight was what he remembered when he was a WVU player back in the 1970s.

Be sure to listen to Huggs’ post-game comments in our podcast section. The poor guy sounds so sick that he was making my nose run just listening to him. With the next game coming up on Sunday, hopefully he can sleep in tomorrow and work from his house.

By the way, Huggs' podcast is here: http://www.msnsportsnet.com/podcast/msnpodcasts.xml

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