By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — Normally, you’d expect someone who has just swept through a pair of postseason awards from the Big East Conference the way Alex Ruoff did to be out-and-out proud of it. After all, it isn’t just anyone who can take home two honors the way Ruoff did.
But, after he was named winning the league’s Sportsmanship Award and its Academic Award, he seemed almost downright embarrassed.
“ just tried to be a nice guy on the court and not elbow anybody or yell at anybody,” he said when he won the Sportsmanship Award. “I wasn’t really going for it, though.”
And when the league’s only Academic All-American won the Academic honor, it was more of the same.
“I get so much crap for this stuff,” he said of the academic awards that just keep coming his way. “I’m not smart. I just work hard in school. It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re an academic all-American? You’re not that smart.’ A lot of people are smarter than me.”
In a way, knowing Ruoff, the reaction is understandable for he takes far more pride in how tough he’s become under Bob Huggins — as if he had any other choice — than to walk off with a pair of awards that probably are firsts for Huggins’ players.
Rest assured, as nice as those trophies are, they’ll wind up collecting dust on Ruoff’s mantle.
Far closer to his heart is what he won on Wednesday night — respect.
Ruoff was coming of perhaps the most disappointment moment of his life, entering the Big East Tournament second-round matchup against Notre Dame coming off the kind of performance on Senior Night that could rip the guts out of a lesser man.
The night had started with tears of joy as he walked down the carpet with his mother, but ended not with red eyes but with a red face, being held scoreless for the first time since his freshman year while turning the basketball over six times.
No one could be sure how Ruoff would react to the situation. Normally, you’d rest assured that he would shake it off as just one of those things, especially coming against as good a defensive team as Louisville, but there was so much emotion involved that it could have played mind games with him for weeks.
The mind, you see, is a far more fragile thing than a jump shot. You can spend a couple of hours in the gym and work out the kinks in your shot, but how do you escape disappointment, keep from feeling sorry for yourself?
It takes an inner strength and confidence, especially when you are moving onto a national stage at the Big East Tournament.
Mr. Nice Guy won’t do it and that A in philosophy won’t help when Luke Harangody is backing in toward the basket on you.
“The advice I got from my coach was put it behind me. It happens,” Ruoff said after the game. “Of course, it hurt me because I care a lot about winning and our team, but that’s one thing you have to put behind you so I wasn’t trying to think too much about it, just come in tonight.”
As if to add to the pressure, Ruoff needed one 3-point shot to break the record he shared with Kevin Pittsnogle for career 3’s made, both owning 253 when the Mountaineers tipped off against Notre Dame.
The start wasn’t exactly a fast one for Ruoff, six minutes and 15 seconds into the game he hadn’t scored, but he had made a nifty pass to Da’Sean Butler for an easy basket that got the Mountaineers off to a 9-2 lead that seemed to light Ruoff up.
All of a sudden it was raining 3s on Notre Dame, Ruoff hit the record breaker to make 12-2, hit another to make it 17-2 and yet another to make it 20-5, erasing the effect of Tory Jackson’s 3-point shot.
Ruoff had the Mountaineers on the run and by halftime they had marched to a gaudy 36-18 lead.
The Mountaineers were playing nearly flawless basketball, both offensively and defensively, and killing the Irish on the boards, Devin Ebanks raking in just about every missed shot on his way to a career-high 18 rebounds for the game.
But Notre Dame had some kick left in it and Harangody, the two-time leading scorer in the Big East, began scoring point after point. All of a sudden you looked up and there was less than 3 minutes to play and the West Virginia lead had been pared to 66-59, which our Academic All-American could figure out was 7 points.
Someone had to do something … fast.
Enter one Alex Ruoff.
The senior from Spring Hill, Fla., took the ball inside, hit a tough, tough shot, was fouled by Jackson and made the free throw. All of a sudden the lead was back to double figures and a semblance of sanity had returned to the game. WVU would score five more points the rest of the way, Ruoff having four of them from the free-throw line.
“He made a great cut and the 3-point play when they were starting to make it interesting,” Huggins said. “That’s a strong shot.”
He’d turned the sorrow of a scoreless evening into a 25-point performance.
Fittingly, the final rebound — West Virginia’s 52nd of the game compared to 32 for Notre Dame — came into Ruoff’s hands.
Certainly, no one had rebounded more than Ruoff had, not even Ebanks.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
