Butler's 22 Leads WVU
March 01, 2010 10:32 PM | General
March 1, 2010
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Da’Sean Butler scored 22 points, grabbed six rebounds and handed out six assists on Senior Day to lead 10th-ranked West Virginia to an 81-68 victory over No. 20 Georgetown Monday night at the WVU Coliseum.
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| West Virginia's Da'Sean Butler points to the crowd after getting a standing ovation for his 22-point performance on Senior Day against Georgetown.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
The victory locks up a double-bye for the Mountaineers in this year’s Big East tournament and gives them 12 conference wins – West Virginia’s most since joining the Big East in 1996.
“I thought we played pretty well,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “I thought we had good patience at both ends. I think it’s really important to have patience defensively when you play Georgetown and then we tried to push them out of what they wanted to do. We were fairly successful of doing that in the first half.”
West Virginia (23-6, 12-5) built its lead to 22 points late in the first half and had its biggest lead of the game at 27 points, 53-26, with 16:54 left in the game.
But Georgetown (19-9, 9-8) methodically cut the lead to 21, then to 16, then to 11, and finally to nine with 5:53 left in the game to make the home crowd a little uncomfortable.
But a pair of Butler free throws stopped Georgetown’s run and another Butler basket with 3:37 left put West Virginia back up by 13.
“We always get up big and start giving up leads and that’s something we don’t want to do but it’s just been happening,” said Bryant. ‘We just got to keep getting better as the season goes on and we don’t have much time, so it’s got to be real soon.”
Devin Ebanks continued his outstanding play down the stretch with 15 points and five rebounds, Kevin Jones contributed 14 points and six boards and Truck Bryant added 11 with seven of those coming from the free throw line.
“I think the biggest thing is we got some easy baskets and we haven’t gotten a lot of easy baskets this year,” said Huggins.
West Virginia shot 27 of 34 from the line to compensate for Georgetown’s 33-31 advantage on the glass. The Hoyas were without top scorer Austin Freeman, who has been feeling ill and was sent back to Washington, D.C., earlier today.
“It hurts a lot not having Austin,” said Georgetown coach John Thompson, III. “He is one of the focal points of what we do. We go to bed last night and he’s doing better and we fully anticipated for him to be out there and then we wake up this morning and he turned worse so we decided to take him back and check him into Georgetown Hospital to get tests run on him.”
Greg Monroe scored 22 points and collected nine rebounds, and Chris Wright added 21 points, six rebounds and seven assists.
“I think they did a better job of executing their defensive schemes then we did executing our offensive schemes,” said Thompson, III.
It was the final home appearance for seniors Butler, Wellington Smith and Cam Payne.
“This is home for me and it’s kind of sad that I will be leaving here,” said Butler. “I am just happy we had an opportunity to come in here and get a win against a good team.”
“It was a very emotional night,” said Smith. “From coaching changes to the lows and the highs and everything just kind of came to this. I had an amazing time here and I will never forget this place. When you put on a West Virginia jersey it means so much.”
Butler, who is going to finish his WVU career as the school’s third leading scorer, said he only became emotional when he was subbed out at the end of the game to a standing ovation.
“I told myself that I wasn’t going to cry before the game because I wasn’t going to try and lose my focus,” he said. “I knew my mother wasn’t going to let me cry because she laughs all of the time. I kind of thought about it when I saw coach, but I kept laughing at him so I could keep laughing.
“But then when I got subbed out and I looked at Jonnie (West), Joe (Mazzulla), Cam (Thoroughman) and Wells, I couldn’t even look anymore.”
A crowd of 13,211 attended tonight’s game to set the school record for both total season attendance (173,281) and average attendance (12,377). The previous highs were 160,070 and an average of 11,384 in 1982.
West Virginia concludes the regular season this weekend with a trip to Villanova on Saturday. The game will be televised nationally on CBS.
