By Bob Hertzel
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sometimes you win basketball games because you play above the rim.
West Virginia University defeated Georgetown, 75-58, Thursday night because they got down and dirty.
The Mountaineers, unranked and disrespected, spent a good bit of time above the rim outrebounding and outdunking a bigger Hoyas team that had rankings of Nos. 14 and 12 in the two polls and that was playing at home, but they made the difference by going down on the floor for a change.
Call it what you want – heart or hustle. It doesn’t show up in the box score, only in the shower when you get a moment to look at the floor burns and the bruises.
Alex Ruoff put it this way:
“We played really desperate,” the senior guard said.
It was the way coach Bob Huggins had asked them to play, noting that the team was 2-2 in the Big East entering the game and was beginning a string of games where seven of the teams the Mountaineers were to play were ranked in the Top 25.
It started early, with Wellington Smith going to the floor for a ball in the game’s first couple of minutes.
“(Assistant coach) Billy Hahn had challenged us,” said forward Da’Sean Butler. “He said he hadn’t seen us go on the floor for a long time. I guess it stuck in our heads.”
When you consider that the Mountaineers are an undersized group no matter who they face in the Big East, it is best that they do fight for each loose ball, just as they must fight for position on rebounds and on defense.
Georgetown, for example, relies a lot on its 6-11 center Greg Monroe. Seeing the Mountaineers were guarding him with Smith, who is listed at 6-7, it would seem that Monroe would feast on the shorter man. But that wasn’t the case.
Smith fought him for much of the night, not to keep him from making shots, but to keep him from taking shots. If he could push him out, if he could keep him from catching the ball, he could contain him. And when he wasn’t in there, others took a shot at defending Monroe.
Even Ruoff, a guard, got to bump and grind with him.
“My job was to see he didn’t catch the ball,” Ruoff said.
Monroe scored 11 points.
“All we did was try to limit his touches,” Huggins explained. “They run so many things through him and he’s got such a great understanding of what John (Thompson III) wants him to do, so we just tried to limit his touches.”
“I don’t think it was anything that I haven’t seen before,” Monroe said. “They’re just trying to front me real hard, just trying to make my teammates have bad angles to pass the ball.”
“They did the same thing with Roy (Hibbert) last year,” said Thompson. “That’s just the way they play; they play everything hard. They play the post hard. … We went through stretches where the ball didn’t go in, and we got frustrated and it snowballed after that.”
Offensively, it was Butler and Ruoff who made the Mountaineers go, Butler finishing with a game-high 27 points and Ruoff struggling with his shot but finishing with 10 points and nine assists.
Freshman Truck Bryant hit a few shots in the first half and scored 13 for the game while forward Smith contributed 10 and freshman Devin Ebanks added 9, two of his baskets coming on spectacular moves that ended in dunks.
Freshman Kevin Jones may have contributed his best game of the year, although it doesn’t show in the box score.
The Mountaineers battled hard to get things going their way in the first half, only to have their Kiddie Korps of freshmen make a couple of terrible mistakes at the end to allow the Hoyas back into the game.
Da’Sean Butler had taken care of business on the offensive end with 15 points, hitting from everywhere, giving WVU a 31-22 lead as the half came down to its final minute.
Things looked even better when Ebanks grabbed a rebound of a miss by DaJuan Summers, which figured to allow the Mountaineers to take a shot at a double-digit lead.
But for whatever reason the freshman decided to pass the ball under the Georgetown basket, where Greg Monroe stepped in, stole the ball and hit a slam.
Instead of a potential 11 point lead it was 7, and the mistakes kept on coming.
West Virginia took the ball out and brought it into the front court, only to have Austin Freeman knock it from Kevin Jones’ grasp.
That was bad. Worse, the freshman grabbed Freeman, giving him a one-and-one. He made both shots, and that lead was down to five points.
But the Mountaineers continued to come at the Hoyas hard in the second half and pulled away for the victory.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
