Tourney Notes
March 13, 2009 03:46 AM | General
2:56 am
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In what seemed like three days ago, West Virginia upset second-ranked Pitt, 74-60, in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals.
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| West Virginia's big three - freshman Kevin Jones, freshman Devin Ebanks and junior Da'Sean Butler - have come up big so far in the Big East Tournament.
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West Virginia fans ready to give it to their Panther buddies at work Friday morning - reminding them of DeJuan Blair prematurely talking about his semifinal rematch with Hasheem Thabeet or Levance Fields saying in the Wednesday newspapers that the Panthers always pack until Saturday - soon got sidetracked by one of the best games in college basketball history.
One, two, three, four, five and then six overtimes later, Syracuse outlasted Connecticut 127-117. It was the second longest game in NCAA Division I history, beginning at 9:36 p.m. and ending at 1:22 the next morning.
If Eric Devendorf had longer fingernails - or official John Cahill the foresight to know that his per-hour salary was being reduced by more than two hours - the game would have ended at the buzzer in regulation with Devendorf making a miraculous shot to give the Orange a 74-71 win.
But the replay clearly showed that the basketball was still in Devendorf’s hand when the clock reached zero.
Syracuse, which plays just seven players, had to go to the end of its bench to finish the game, while almost all of Connecticut’s big guns were still out on the floor for a good part of the six overtimes. Coach Jim Boeheim said as much during his television interview after the game, which had to be a big confidence booster for his guys in there at the end who usually don’t play.
What makes the victory even harder to understand (especially if you are a UConn fan) is that Syracuse never led in any of the overtimes until the last one.
After a Big East-mandated ½-hour media session, the Syracuse players had to hustle back to their hotel rooms and get as much rest as they could before getting up to begin preparing for tonight’s semifinal game against West Virginia at 9 p.m.
The Syracuse coaches will have to pull an all-nighter getting prepared to face West Virginia’s 1-3-1 zone. The same goes for West Virginia’s coaches, which had to wait until almost 1:30 in the morning to go full-speed ahead on a Syracuse scouting report.
The guess here is that there will be a lot of curtains drawn well into Friday afternoon.
The second thing we will hear this morning, afternoon and early evening (the first being the epic game Syracuse and Connecticut played) is will Syracuse have enough gas left in their tank to beat the Mountaineers?
Remember, it’s not like these guys are 40-year-old men who take cigarette breaks at halftime. The Orange will be ready, as will the Mountaineers.
Levance Fields may have packed until Saturday, but his bags were already out of the locker room by the time the reporters were allowed in. According to this morning's Post-Gazette, both Fields and Sam Young chose to take a pass on post-game interviews. Perhaps they had a lot of that extra Saturday luggage to load on the bus.
After watching Thursday’s games – Villanova beating Marquette on a last-second shot, West Virginia stunning second-ranked and probable-No. 1-NCAA-Tournament-seed Pittsburgh, and then the Syracuse-Connecticut classic – anyone who says the Big East is not the best basketball conference in the country is a living brain donor.
Not since Gale Catlett has there been a basketball coach who gets more pleasure out of beating Pitt than Bob Huggins. If you have any doubts, just listen to his Thursday night post-game comments and then compare them with the two radio interviews he did after his Mountaineers were mauled by the Panthers earlier this year.
After those two losses it sounded like Jack Black had punted his pet dog Baxter off the Westover Bridge.
West Virginia is playing well enough without Huggs having to wear the same suit two days in a row, but the superstitious coach still isn't taking any chances. The guess here is that WVU assistant equipment manager Steve Bierer will have to hustle to get the suit dry-cleaned and pressed in time for tonight's game against Syracuse.
Here is something to chew on … how much better can West Virginia play if it can actually make some shots? The Mountaineers shot just 35.9 percent in its 74-62 victory over Notre Dame on Wednesday night and followed that up with a 44-percent performance Thursday against the Panthers in a 14-point win.
The difference in both games was rebounding. West Virginia out-rebounded Notre Dame, 52-32 … and in an even bigger shocker, out-rebounded Pitt, 33-27.
The 1-3-1 zone may still be around, but that's about all that's left from days gone by.
As great a victory as Thursday night's Backyard Brawl was, it still doesn't make up for the 13-9 football debacle in Morgantown in 2007. I think any Mountaineer fan with even a mild dislike of Pitt will agree with that.
We get a lot of Pittsburgh news down in Morgantown and the consensus of what we read, hear and see is that Pitt is still on track to win its first national championship since the Charley Hyatt days. That may or may not happen, but sometimes a disappointing loss at the right time can do wonders for a team. Pitt will most likely keep its No. 1 seed in the upcoming NCAA Tournament, although the likelihood of the Panthers being the No. 1 overall seed is probably gone.
However, you get the feeling that if Pitt stumbles in the NCAA Tournament before reaching the Elite Eight or Final Four, some of the more temperamental Pittsburgh scribes are ready to pounce on the Panthers.
How does West Virginia's win over Pitt translate into an NCAA Tournament seeding? Well, one RPI I saw out there has the Mountaineers' at No. 19. If that is the case and the RPI is one of the criteria being used by the NCAA selection committee, West Virginia may have moved up to a 5 or 6 seed.
How meaningful that is remains to be seen. When West Virginia made its Elite Eight run in 2005, the Mountaineers were a 7-seed. A year later when they returned to the Sweet 16, the Mountaineers were a 6-seed.
In 2008, West Virginia's Sweet 16 run began as a 7-seed. And in 1998 when West Virginia made its run to the Sweet 16, the Mountaineers were a 10-seed.
How you're playing and not who you're playing is probably the best indicator of how far you will go in the tournament.
By the way, I hope the boss sees the post time for this blog.
Enjoy your weekend.
