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Basketball Notebook: That Time of Year Again
December 15, 2015 02:05 PM | Men's Basketball
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia rebounded nicely from last Tuesday night’s disappointing performance in the Jimmy V Classic in New York City with its convincing 100-58 victory over UL Monroe on Sunday.
WVU made 15 3s against the Warhawks - the most by a Bob Huggins-coached Mountaineer team since 2007 when they canned 18 at Radford on “Darris Nichols Day.”
Nichols had a big hand in those 18 3s, getting seven of them to score a game-high-tying 23 points. Nichols, of course, is now an assistant coach at Florida, who the Mountaineers will play in Gainesville in late January.
West Virginia has three more non-conference games over the semester break against Marshall on Thursday night in Charleston, at the WVU Coliseum against Eastern Kentucky on Monday, December 21, and then at Virginia Tech on Wednesday, December 30. WVU starts Big 12 play at Kansas State on Saturday, January 2.
The Mountaineers appear to be following the same pattern established last year of winning their first seven games before dropping game No. 8 against a Power 5 Conference opponent (last year it was LSU at the Coliseum).
Then after that first loss, WVU ran off five more non-conference victories over Northern Kentucky, Marshall, NC State, Wofford and Virginia Tech to begin Big 12 play on a roll.
Coach Bob Huggins is hopeful that pattern continues this year.
Briefly:
Bob Huggins
* Huggins spent a scant three minutes on the telephone for his weekly Big 12 Coaches’ teleconference on Monday morning a day after his team deposited UL Monroe, so not much new ground was covered.
Huggins was asked if he has had an opportunity to catch up with Marshall coach Dan D’Antoni, who raised eyebrows following last year’s game with his bizarre suggestions on how to improve the WVU-Marshall basketball series.
“No. I haven’t seen him,” was Huggins’ response. There was no follow-up question to his five-word answer.
Then it was off to other topics about his team. Huggins was asked to summarize where they are right now nine games into the season.
“I think we’ve done a pretty good job with our full-court pressure but we need to be more consistent offensively,” he said. “We’ve played well offensively at times and not so well at other times and I think that’s the one area that we need to kind of shore up, clean up and become more consistent there.”
* West Virginia dropped two spots to 16th in this week’s USA Today Coaches’ Poll and six spots to 20th in the Associated Press Poll following last Tuesday’s 16-point loss to Virginia in New York.
It is the 47th week the Mountaineers have been ranked in the top 25 under Huggins – the second-most weeks by a WVU coach in the national rankings in school history. Fred Schaus had West Virginia in the polls for 60 weeks during his six-season tenure from 1954-60; Gale Catlett’s teams spent 30 weeks in the polls, mostly in the early 1980s and then again in the late 1990s.
Here is the breakdown of West Virginia’s weeks in the top 25 by coach:
Fred Schaus (1954-60), 60 weeks
Bob Huggins (2007- ), 47 weeks
Gale Catlett (1978-2002), 30 weeks
John Beilein (2003-2007), 20 weeks
George King (1961-65), 12 weeks
Red Brown (1951-54), 10 weeks
Sonny Moran (1970-74), 1 week
Interestingly enough, Bucky Waters didn’t have a team nationally ranked during his four-season tenure here from 1966-69, nor did Joedy Gardner when Huggins was a WVU player the mid-1970s.
* Speaking of Bucky Waters, the Raleigh News-Observer’s Barry Jacobs recently wrote a nice column on the former WVU and Duke coach, who turns 80 this week: http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/college/acc/duke/article49662450.html. Waters’ four seasons at West Virginia University in the late 1960s were interesting, to say the least.
I recall a humorous Bucky Waters story Dave Reaser once told me that involved a West Virginia game played in New York City in the late 1960s.
The game was at the old Madison Square Garden and after the team bus pulled up to the historic venue, Waters was the first person to get off on a cold, snowy winter day. The young WVU coach went to the side entrance where the teams normally go to get into the arena and when he grabbed the door handle it was locked.
Waters began pounding on the door to get someone’s attention because it was extremely cold outside and he didn’t want to be out there any longer than he had to.
Eventually, an arena attendant came to the door and told him that he would have to wait outside with the rest of the people until the coach arrived.
Of course, this was before Bucky’s days as a big TV star.
* Thursday night’s Chesapeake Energy Capital Classic will be the 44th meeting between the two state rivals and the 25th time the game will be played in the Charleston Civic Center.
The two teams played twice in Charleston in 1980 and 1989 before making the game an annual event in the Capital City in 1992.
Prior to that, the two schools played home-and-home for eight seasons from 1981-88 before the games become too volatile. Moving it to Charleston proved to be a nice solution for everyone involved.
I recall former WVU coach Gale Catlett once telling me that the negotiations to get this game moved to Charleston on an annual basis were among the most detailed and complicated that he was ever involved with during his long coaching career.
* It’s nearly impossible to come up with an all-encompassing list of the best WVU-Marshall games because the series has been so lopsided through the years, but here are a few that stand out to me as some of the more memorable:
January 25, 2006 – Marshall 58, West Virginia 52
Fresh off its 60-56 victory over UCLA at Pauley Pavilion, West Virginia was brought back down to Earth three days later when a 12-win Marshall team knocked off the ninth-ranked Mountaineers, 58-52. West Virginia went to the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 that season while Marshall went to Arby’s for lunch. Ouch.
January 11, 2005 – Marshall 59, West Virginia 55
John Beilein’s West Virginia teams could shoot just about anywhere – anywhere that is except the Charleston Civic Center. The Mountaineers couldn’t throw it in the ocean on this January night in the Capital City and a Thundering Herd team that won just six games that year upset the 24th-ranked Mountaineers, 59-55. That victory and his follow-up win against WVU in 2006 likely bought Ron Jirsa a couple of more seasons of work on the Thundering Herd bench.
January 27, 1999 – West Virginia 85, Marshall 84 (OT)
There was nothing special about either team that year – Marshall was 16-11 and 11-7 in the Mid-American Conference while West Virginia was struggling through a 10-win campaign – but the game in Charleston that year was pretty special. And it took an extra five minutes to settle things when West Virginia guard Lionel Armstead banged in a 3 from the top of the key at the buzzer to give the Mountaineers an exciting, come-from-behind victory. What I remember most about that game was veteran radio play-by-play man Tony Caridi continuing to describe the mob scene on the floor while analyst Jay Jacobs was excitedly shouting “Choo-Choo!” at the top of his lungs. “Choo-Choo,” of course, was in reference to Armstead (Lionel trains).
January 19, 1994 – West Virginia 79, Marshall 67
The game was non-descript with one exception – it probably should have never been played in the first place. A heavy January winter storm blanketed the state requiring Governor Gaston Caperton to issue a state of emergency. The two schools didn’t get the memo and opted to play the game anyway, and 6,805 rabid (or foolish) hoop fans drove through a foot of snow to watch the game. P.G. Greene had one of his typical good games against the Herd with 23 points, six rebounds, three assists and three steals.
Lionel Armstead walks off the court as Marshall fans celebrate a 2002 victory in Charleston.
January 23, 2002 – Marshall 81, West Virginia 79
Marshall coach Greg White got his only victory against West Virginia in 2002 in what was to be Gale Catlett’s final season coaching the Mountaineers, but what sticks out most about that game was some idiot fan pulling the fire alarm that caused a lengthy delay in the game, just five months removed from the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Marshall forward Tamar Slay was once again a Mountaineer slayer with 23 points and seven rebounds. Slay scored 16 points in a four-point defeat to WVU in 2001, and he also had 35 points in Marshall’s five-point loss to WVU in 2000.
January 18, 1996 – Marshall 91, West Virginia 87
Marshall won this up-and-down game, 91-87, behind guard Keith Veney’s game-high 29 points, but it was the scintillating open-court playmaking of Marshall guard Jason Williams, and the youthful exuberance of coach Billy Donovan, that really made this game memorable to me. Donovan spent just two seasons in Huntington before moving on to the big time at Florida, taking Williams with him.
December 27, 1986 – West Virginia 69, Marshall 67
West Virginia needed every single one of its 29 baskets (and 10 free throws) to pull out a very difficult, 69-67 victory over Marshall at the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown. Marshall people may point to coach Rick Huckaby’s 1984 team that lost to Villanova in the first round of the NCAA tournament as his strongest while in Huntington, but this one was right there. Guard Skip Henderson, who once scored 55 points in a single game, was a tremendous talent in the backcourt, and Marshall also had a formidable big man in the paint in 6-foot-9-inch center Tom Curry. The late Huckaby wore a tuxedo to his first WVU game in 1983 and his nutty on-court antics irritated West Virginia fans to no end, but at least his Marshall teams were formidable and could back up some of the foolish things he did. Huckaby's ‘84 Marshall squad won 25 games and a Southern Conference title, and he also took Marshall teams to the NCAA tournament in 1985 and 1987 before the sheriff came to town, turned out the lights and put his program on probation. By 1990, Huckaby was out in Huntington, replaced by Dana Altman, who coached one season there before moving on to Kansas State.
As for this year’s game, there are upper level seats still remaining and those can be purchased by visiting the Charleston Civic Center box office or by calling 304-345-1500.
This year’s contest will be televised nationally on ESPNU.
College Basketball Crown Recap
Thursday, April 16
Ross Hodge, Honor Huff & Brenen Lorient | Oklahoma Postgame
Sunday, April 05
Ross Hodge, Treysen Eaglestaff & Brenen Lorient | Creighton Postgame
Saturday, April 04
Ross Hodge & Honor Huff | Stanford Postgame
Thursday, April 02
