Final Four Notebook
April 01, 2010 06:04 PM | General
April 1, 2010
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INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – West Virginia had a closed workout Thursday morning at the University of Indianapolis and later got an opportunity to get a feel for Lucas Oil Stadium. On Friday, the team will have an open shoot around at 1 p.m. that is expected to attract more than 20,000 fans.
AP photo
“This is definitely a special time to be from West Virginia University,” said sophomore forward Kevin Jones. “It’s a special opportunity and we’re going to take it as such. We’re going to go out there and play our hearts out for the team and the university.”
Da’Sean Butler says West Virginia will be facing an extremely talented team in Duke on Saturday night.
“They do all the right things, and do what their coach asks them to do, and are successful for it,” said Butler. “They’ve beaten a lot of good teams to be here, and their big three are very good. They do a lot of scoring, and the other two starters do all the dirty work.”
Coaches Bob Huggins and Mike Krzyzewski agree that rebounding will play a big part in Saturday’s game.
“You have to be determined to play missed shots,” Krzyzewski said. “I don’t know how many teams in the United States rebound more than 40 percent of their misses like both of us do.”
“Well, they’ve grown a foot and that helps,” said Huggins. “I think Zoubek has done a great job. He keeps a lot of balls alive. Mike has done a great job in making sure they fill their roles and do the things he wants them to do."
Briefly:
“I think that literally turned the season around,” Smith said. “He knew that he could get his team to the Final Four. He knew that he could pay the university and the state of West Virginia back for everything that they have done for him.”
Smith also spoke about what Huggins means to him as a coach.
“He means everything to me. He’s like a second father,” said Smith. “It’s a shame there are people out there that think they know him, but they don’t. They say certain things. I love the guy.”
“We played pretty weak throughout the game,” he said. “We’re different this year.”
A hot topic is the proposed expanded 96-team NCAA tournament field, which could potentially generate even greater revenue for the NCAA.
“If you were to look at the NCAA’s contract, since the expansion – over the last 25 years, the media revenue, the media rights revenue, has grown 2,200 percent,” Shaheen said. “So the curve of that is significant and the need for that, when we’re moving 96 cents on the dollar to our membership, is to offer security in that regard.”
John Feinstein got into a testy exchange with Shaheen over the loss of additional class time. Feinstein pointed out that in a 96-team tournament model second-round games would likely be played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
“They play a game Saturday/Sunday, play a game Tuesday or Wednesday, then go directly to the regional,” said Feinstein. “Tell me when in that second week they’re going to be in class.”
“If you listened to my original answer, they leave now on Tuesday,” said Shaheen.
“I’m talking about the second week, not the first week,” said Feinstein.
“The entire first week, the majority of the teams would be in class,” responded Shaheen.
“You’re just not going to answer the question about the second week,” Feinstein replied. “You’re going to keep referring back to the first week, right? They’re going to miss the entire second week under this model.”
