Jones Leads Rout
January 06, 2010 09:51 PM | General
January 6, 2010
BOX SCORE | PHOTOS
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – You have to look pretty hard to find anything wrong with West Virginia’s performance tonight against Rutgers.
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| Kevin Jones scored 19 points and grabbed eight rebounds to lead West Virginia to an 86-52 win over Rutgers Wednesday night in Morgantown.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
The eighth-rated Mountaineers, sporting new black uniforms, scored 27 points off of 20 Rutgers turnovers to run away with an 86-52 victory at the Coliseum before a crowd of 9,586 that braved the snowy conditions outside.
West Virginia, which never trailed, got up by 10 nine minutes into the game and led 47-30 at halftime.
“I thought we continued to play and I thought everyone that we put into the game continued to play,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins.
Most of the damage tonight came from New York City guys. Kevin Jones finished with 19 points and eight rebounds, Da’Sean Butler and Truck Bryant scored 15 points each while Devin Ebanks scored 11 points, grabbed nine rebounds, handed out four assists, blocked two shots and made three steals.
Eleven different players scored for the Mountaineers and no starter played more than 33 minutes (Butler). Da’Sean is now tied with P.G. Greene for 10th in career scoring at WVU with 1,655 points.
Huggins thought the day off that he gave the team earlier this week made a big difference tonight. West Virginia was coming off a tough stretch of games that ended with its 77-62 loss at fourth-ranked Purdue last Friday.
“We spent a little more time in the film room on Sunday than what we normally would and then we had two good practices on Monday and Tuesday,” Huggins said. “Then we cut it short yesterday. We weren’t on the floor near as long as what we normally are. We need to get that bounce back and pretty much I thought we had that today.”
Bryant returned to the starting lineup for the first time since Cleveland State and responded with one of his best all-around performances of the season. In addition to his 15 points, Bryant had two assists, two rebounds, two steals and had only one turnover. He came into tonight’s game with a team-high 29 turnovers.
“Truck was really good,” said Huggins. “The reason Truck was good was because he’s had really good practices. I’m a firm believer that you play the way you practice.”
“We picked up our defensive intensity and pressured the guards and forced them to play fast and do different things,” added Bryant. “Our defense definitely picked up our offense.”
West Virginia (12-1, 3-0) also got a solid performance from junior Joe Mazzulla, whose left shoulder looked vastly improved tonight.
“The doctors feel like he’s improving,” said Huggins. “We weren’t going to get through the whole season playing Da at point. It wears him down and people are smart enough to come up and pressure him and try to wear on his legs.
“Now there are still going to be times when he is going to play point for us, but by and large he seemed a little happier with the freedom to move without the ball,” said Huggins.
Rutgers (9-5, 0-2) got 17 points on 7 of 8 shooting from Jonathan Mitchell. The Scarlet Knights’ leading scorer, Mike Rosario, finished with just 11 – six points below his season’s average.
West Virginia had a 71-47 advantage in shots attempted, 39-28 advantage in rebounding, and 18-9 advantage in assists and a 14-3 margin in steals.
The Mountaineers shot 49.3% overall (35 of 71) while holding Rutgers to 42.6% overall (20 of 47).
“We scored 86 points because we passed the ball and the game didn’t last as long because you’re not firing up shots and fouling them and the ball is bouncing out of bounds,” said Huggins.
Rutgers is now 5-26 against West Virginia in Morgantown. The Scarlet Knights’ last win in Morgantown came in 2002.
West Virginia is 3-0 in Big East play for just the third time since joining the league in 1996, and the first for the Mountaineers since 2007.
WVU will look to make it 4-0 on Saturday night at Notre Dame in a game that will be televised nationally on ESPNU.
“The first thing (assistant coach) Billy Hahn said when we came into the locker room is Notre Dame is better than they were a year ago,” said Huggins. “They take better shots. They had a tendency a year ago to force some shots and probably had some guys that didn’t guard as well as they’re guarding right now.”
The Irish are now 13-3, 2-1 after winning at South Florida 75-74 Tuesday night. Saturday’s game will tip at 8 p.m.
