MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - New Dominion meets Old Dominion once again in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday afternoon when West Virginia takes on Virginia in a battle of two top 25-ranked teams.
The sixth-ranked and undefeated Cavaliers are coming off a 63-61 victory over Ohio State on Wednesday night when UVa overcame a 16-point Buckeye first-half lead.
Guard London Perrantes scored 19 points and backcourt mate Devon Hall contributed 12 to help Virginia improve to 7-0 on the season.
“They came out at the beginning of the second half and did a great job,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “Ohio State had some chances and didn’t score. They had some shots at the rim that they didn’t make and quite frankly, that’s been our problem.”
The Cavaliers also boast recent wins over Iowa and Providence.
Virginia is leading the country by allowing just 44.1 points per game. Veteran coach Tony Bennett’s Pack-Line defense has held three opponents to fewer than 40 points this season, and all but Ohio State to less than 60 points.
Teams are shooting just 33.1 percent against the Cavaliers this season, including 29.6 percent from 3.
Virginia also has outstanding numbers in turnovers (8.7), offensive rebounding (+19) and free throw shooting (nearly 70 percent).
“They make open shots and they make free throws,” said Huggins. “They don’t turn the ball over so you can’t turn it over, particularly you can’t turn it over to them for scores. There are going to be limited possessions because of the way they pay and you can’t give them open shots.”
In order for 25th-ranked West Virginia to pull off a big road victory on Saturday, it is going to have to perform better than it did in last Friday’s game against Temple in Brooklyn, New York.
In that game the Mountaineers (5-1) trailed by 20 at halftime, used relentless pressure to get back into it, briefly took the lead inside of 10 minutes to go, and then made some critical errors down the stretch to see the Owls pull out an 81-77 decision.
“We struggled to score, and it wasn’t that we didn’t have opportunities. We missed 17 layups against Temple. Seventeen is a lot,” noted Huggins.
West Virginia’s other five games this year have been blowout wins, including last Monday night’s game against Manhattan at the Coliseum when the Mountaineers led by 33 at halftime.
WVU has forced 164 turnovers and taken 112 more shots than its opponents so far this year.
Senior Nathan Adrian (13.5 ppg.) and sophomore Esa Ahmad (13.2 ppg.) are West Virginia’s top two scorers, with Ahmad coming off back-to-back 19 point games against Temple and Manhattan. He has made 15 of his last 20 field goal attempts.
An area where Huggins said he is seeking more productivity from his team is on the glass, especially on the offensive glass.
“We’ve got to become more consistent at the things that will get you extra possessions. Creating turnovers gets you extra possessions and rebounding the ball, particularly offensive rebounding gets you extra possessions,” he said. “And we haven’t been very good at that. Those are the things we’ve got to do a good job of.”
Saturday’s game against Virginia will be the 18th all-time meeting and the first in Charlottesville since January 29, 1975 when Huggins was a Mountaineer player.
Virginia owns a slim 9-8 advantage in the series and took last year’s game at Madison Square Garden in the Jimmy V Classic, 70-54. West Virginia had an early double-digit lead before going ice cold.
“We just did dumb things in that game,” Huggins said. “We made mistakes that led to layups. We overran the ball and gave up a huge 3 that got them going. Then we came down and made a turnover when we had a three on one and that got them going. We can’t do those things.”
A 2 p.m. tipoff is scheduled for Saturday’s game, to be televised nationally on ESPNU (Doug Sherman and Seth Greenberg).
The Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG’s radio coverage will begin at 1 p.m. on WRLF-FM in Morgantown/Fairmont, and online through WVUsports.com and the mobile app WVU Gameday.
All other network affiliates will air the Baylor football game, which will kick off at 3:30 p.m.
Friday Sound
