Thursday, March 16
Birmingham, Ala.
12:15 p.m.
West Virginia University
vs
Maryland
Photo by: WVU Athletic Communications
West Virginia, Maryland to Renew Hoop Rivalry Thursday in NCAA Tournament
March 15, 2023 01:19 PM | Men's Basketball
| Tale of the Tape |  |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Points Per Game | 70.4 | 76.3 |
| Points Against | 63.2 | 71.0 |
| Field Goals % | 44.9 | 45.3 |
| Field Goal % Defense | 42.8 | 44.8 |
| 3-Point FG % | 33.0 | 34.8 |
| 3-Point FG % Defense | 32.1 | 34.1 |
| Free Throw % | 73.9 | 74.1 |
| Free Throw % Against | 72.7 | 72.7 |
| Rebounds Per Game | 33.8 | 33.8 |
| Rebounds Against | 31.7 | 31.3 |
| Personal Fouls | 523 | 608 |
| Personal Fouls Against | 600 | 709 |
| Assists | 380 | 435 |
| Assists Against | 370 | 408 |
| Turnovers | 347 | 428 |
| Turnovers Against | 394 | 483 |
| Steals | 177 | 221 |
| Steals Against | 152 | 220 |
He also managed to mention the small Ohio village in which he grew up, Gnadenhutten, the number of stoplights (two) and bars (nine) in small town America with just 500 inhabitants.
"I grew up the right way. I grew up in what people really think of when you think back about it - that's real America. I have been blessed," he said.
That's just a sampling of the wisdom West Virginia's 69-year-old basketball coach imparted upon us Wednesday morning inside Legacy Arena in downtown Birmingham, Alabama.
His ninth-seeded Mountaineer basketball team will be taking on eighth-seeded Maryland in tomorrow's first game at 12:15 p.m. EDT in what should be an entertaining three days of college basketball in the Magic City.
The second game of the first session pits overall No. 1 seed Alabama against First-Four winner Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, while the evening session features Auburn against Iowa, followed by Houston versus Northern Kentucky.
This site has certainly gotten the attention of CBS, which assigned its "A-crew" of Jim Nantz, Bill Raftery, Grant Hill and Tracy Wolfson to cover these games.
West Virginia and Maryland don't have much of a recent history, particularly after the Terps transitioned from the Atlantic Coast Conference to the Big Ten, but the two border rivals have met on the hardwood 38 times with the Mountaineers winning 24 of them.
The two played frequently in the 1980s when Gale Catlett coached West Virginia and Lefty Driesell coached Maryland, and the series continued into the early 1990s after Gary Williams took over.
The two also played each other in the NCAA Tournament, including once here in Birmingham in 1984 when Legacy Arena was then known Jefferson Coliseum.
West Virginia was an 11-seed in the tournament that year and upset 17th-ranked Oregon State in a first-round game when guard J.J. Crawl stole an inbounds pass and drove the length of the court for a winning layup, but its second-round meeting two nights later against the 11th-ranked Terps was a colossal mismatch.
Maryland, behind Ben Coleman's 19 points and 18 each from Lenny Bias and Herman Veal, overpowered the Mountaineers 102-77.
Thirty-one years later, the two teams met again in an NCAA Tournament second-round game at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, where West Virginia turned the tables by defeating the Terps 69-59.
Huggins coached that game for West Virginia, but Maryland's Kevin Willard was still building his Power 5 credentials at Seton Hall. They have met only once when the two were still in the Big East, Huggins' Mountaineers defeating the Pirates 56-44 at the WVU Coliseum and falling 67-48 10 months later at the Prudential Center.
That's similar to how their two current teams have performed this season. Huggins' Mountaineers were 13-4 at home, 3-8 on the road and 3-2 at neutral sites. Willard's Terrapins were 16-1 at home, 2-9 on the road and 3-2 at neutral sites.
At its home arena, Maryland defeated Purdue 68-54 while the Boilermakers defeated West Virginia 80-68 on a neutral floor in late November.
Neither team has a big quite like Purdue's Zach Edey, but they do have lots of quality players. Charlotte transfer Jahmir Young is Maryland's top scorer (16.1 ppg.) and playmaker (104 assists), while West Virginia guard Erik Stevenson is one of only five players in WVU history to score 20 points or more in a game five straight games near the of this season.
The South Carolina transfer is West Virginia's top point maker, averaging 15.5 points per game.
Maryland has four players averaging double figures, as does West Virginia. The Terps average 70.4 points per game, allow their opponents just 63.2 points and shoot 44.9% overall, 33% from 3-point distance.
The Mountaineers are averaging 76.3 points, allowing their opponents 71 points, shooting 45.3% overall and 34.8% from 3. Maryland is one of the best teams in the country in keeping opposing teams off the foul line, while West Virginia is one of the best at getting there.Both teams boast similar NET numbers (WVU – 25, Maryland – 31) playing in college basketball's power conferences.
"I just have seen them on tape, but I think they are playing extremely well," Huggins said of the 21-12 Terps. "Kevin has done a terrific job of putting them in positions where they can be successful, which is what we're supposed to try to do - put them in positions where they can be successful. I think he's done a great job of putting guys in positions that fit them."
"For us against West Virginia, we have to be really good at transition defense, and we have to be very good at weakside rebounding," Willard said.
Thursday's game could come down to a final possession, which should make for a nail-biting afternoon.
Huggins has been on both sides of that deal during his Hall of Fame coaching career.
Willard's March Madness experience is not quite as extensive. His Seton Hall teams made the dance five times, only advancing out of the first round in 2018.
But Huggins is the son of a coach. Willard is too. His father, Ralph, coached him at Pitt in 1997. Naturally, Huggs has some advice on being a coach's son, too.
"My mother wanted me to be a doctor, but I found out how many classes you had to take to do that, and there's got to be a better way out than this," he said. "So -- I did it because I loved the game, I love being around the game. I got an opportunity to be a … volunteer coach, or whatever, right after I got done playing, and I liked it. I like working with the guys. I like coaching the guys. I like sharing what I learned as a player with them. And it just seemed like the right thing to do. Plus, I didn't want to leave Morgantown."
Willard understands.
"My first memory of life is helping my dad revarnish St. Dominic's High School basketball gym," he said. "I was out there pouring the polyurethane while he was sweeping it. I have been around this game since I was ... that's my first memory of life is helping him in a gym. I was in the back of the van. You know, all the guys at St. Dom's would try to get me to go up and make sure we could stop at McDonald's after a game.
"I've pushed my sons to baseball because I want them to try something different in life, because this is a very hard profession," he said. "I saw a little bit of the negativity. But you only see the fun times. You get to go in the locker room, you get to be on the court, you get to be through warmups.
"I was a ball boy for the New York Knicks when I was in sixth and seventh grade. I'm sitting there next to Michael Jordan. You remember that. You don't understand that, you know, you have to deal with one of your players' parents dying, and you have to deal with that. And you have to deal with these kids and the stress that they go through. You don't see that as a kid. But I think I was very blessed to have such a great father that included me in all those things. And I was very blessed to play for him, because I think he's one of the best coaches that ever coached," he concluded.
It's a certainty Huggins feels the same way about his father, Charlie.
Players Mentioned
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