By Bob Hertzel
Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN — West Virginia’s victory party following the triumph over Seton Hall was short-lived, thank you.
But then that’s the way it is in the Big East.
Almost before you can say “Hip, hip, hooray,” they’re throwing another, tougher game at you.
For West Virginia, it’s an important battle for seeding in the Big East Tournament and the Mountaineers’ bid to get a second-round bid in the NCAA Tournament, traveling to Hartford to take on the University of Connecticut in a Big Monday matchup.
Tipoff is 7 p.m. on ESPN.
“It’s hard on both teams," Coach Bob Huggins said. "It’s not just the one-day turnaround. Obviously, if the teams are playing on Big Monday, somebody thinks they’re pretty good. It’s two pretty good teams playing each other, and it’s the same for both teams, but it’s a difficult thing.
“I think the tradeoff is the national exposure you get and certainly the national exposure our league gets. It helps everything.”
It is actually about even for both teams, for while UConn is at home, they played Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m. at Rutgers, so they, too, had to travel.
It has been a troubled year for the Huskies, who are used to playing for national titles, let alone Big East titles.
But this year they are an NCAA bubble team with a 16-11 record and 6-8 mark in the conference.
Their coach, Jim Calhoun, who already has his place in the Basketball Hall of Fame, missed a big chunk of the season with an unspecified illness.
What can be said is that Connecticut is looking like a team that’s beginning to peak, possessing talent and coming off three victories in its last four games, the last two on the road.
And one of those victories makes you sit up and take notice, having knocked off Villanova on the road.
Certainly Huggins, who probably is on that same Hall of Fame road, knows that Connecticut is better than its record shows.
“I think it probably starts with that they have a Hall of Fame coach over there that’s won a lot of games,” Huggins said. “They have such great size. They’ve always, somehow, gotten great size to go to Storrs, so consequently, it’s hard to score close. For the last probably 10-12 years they’ve been one of the top two or three teams in the country in blocked shots.”
As everyone knows, WVU likes to try to get to the basket, but they are going to have to deal with Gavin Edwards and Alex Oriakhi, who have blocked 112 shots between them.
As a team, WVU has 107 blocked shots.
“They really limit your goals that you get, and I think the other thing that happens is that leads to transition,” Huggins said. “I think most teams in this league, the top teams in this league, if you play half-court, it’s a heck of a game.
“I think the difference is those are people who can get out in transition and score, and they are certainly a great transition team. They ran up and down with Villanova, arguably best transition team in country, and ran and were successful.”
West Virginia, however, has allowed no one to intimidate it this year, at home or on the road. In fact, the Mountaineers possess 11 road victories, which is tied with Villanova for most in the conference.
With Connecticut’s inside game, Huggins may have to turn to freshman Deniz Kilicli more than in his previous games and Kilicli seems ready for the challenge offensively, although he does have to begin banging the boards harder.
Da’Sean Butler, on his way to becoming the schools third 2,000-point scorer, needs three points for 1,900.
WVU has never won at Connecticut since joining the Big East, going 0-7, two of the losses in Hartford. Calhoun is 13-3 against WVU.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
