By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — It’s still fresh in Bob Huggins’ mind.
Villanova was in town, which in and of itself is enough of a challenge for any coach, but to add to the already monumental problem, West Virginia University’s best player, Da’Sean Butler, was hobbled with a sprained ankle.
“We didn’t think he was going to play,” Huggins recalled. “He spent every second he could in the training room, then go out limping around, then back. He could hardly walk.”
That night West Virginia beat Villanova despite Butler’s ankle problem.
It helped, too, that Butler scored 43 points in the game, something that had not been done in the Coliseum during his lifetime.
That says something about Butler, something good.
“Some guys enjoy being ‘Wounded Warriors,’” Huggins said. “They enjoy limping around. Da is not like that. He wants to play.”
And play he does.
When he takes the floor for an 11-1 West Virginia tonight for a 7 p.m. Big East game against a 9-4 Rutgers team it will mark the 121st game of his WVU career.
Perhaps we should amend the presentation of that little informational tidbit.
He has played 121 consecutive games.
The truth of the matter is that since he began playing organized basketball — that would be junior high and high school and AAU and college — he has missed exactly one game.
It was in high school and the way he put it was that he missed the game “for personal reasons.”
They were that the coach wouldn’t play him because of something he had done, letting him dress but sit the game out.
It was an experience he did not like at all.
“I don’t want to miss any games,” he said. “There’s no reason to miss a game.”
One has to understand that Butler has not been injury free. There have been injuries, like the ankle sprain before the Villanova game, just nothing that required hospitalization, surgery or a full body cast, about the only things that seem capable of keeping him from playing.
“Playing is a little bit too much fun,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to show how much better you have gotten. You can’t do that from the sideline.”
It is hard to imagine just how much better Butler has gotten, but this might give you an idea.
On Tuesday he was named one of 30 mid-season candidates for the Wooden Award, given to college basketball’s best player.
Considering that Butler is averaging 16.6 points a game, 6.1 rebounds and has 44 assists you can understand why he is being looked at that way, although he is at somewhat of a loss for words when you bring it up.
“I haven’t won that many awards,” he said. “If I do win it, it would be cool.”
No, being nominated is cool. Winning it is downright freezing.
When Butler looks at his career, there is certainly much of which he can be proud. Ask him which statistics makes him proudest and he gives a surprise answer, for it is one of the most modest ones.
“Steals,” he said. “I have 120 of them. (Actually, it’s 122) I saw after my freshman year I had 40 steals and ‘How’d I get 40 steals? I was just standing there.’”
It is the self-deprecating kind of humor Butler uses when he explains how he’s been able to string all those games together without injury.
“I do a decent job of protecting myself,” he said. “I’m not a freak athlete like Joe Alexander. I’m not a track star like Joe Mazzulla. I know what I can do. I’m not a great jumper, so you don’t find me taking off from the free throw line to dunk.”
No, all he does is just hit the same only boring jump shot … over and over and over.
The Mountaineers will be looking to get back onto their winning ways after a bad day against No. 4 Purdue when they lost their first game. In Rutgers they face an improving team but one they figure to be able to handle on their home court.
Rutgers comes in with two straight losses after having won six in a row.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
