By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — Judging by the reputation he brought with him to West Virginia University from Cincinnati, it can’t be deemed surprising that Bob Huggins was still awake at 5 a.m. Thursday, especially since he was in New York City.
But this time it was all business for the West Virginia basketball coach. He had but 24 hours to devise a game plan for his Big East Tournament game against Pittsburgh, not only the Mountaineers’ old Backyard Brawl rival, but the nation’s No. 2 team.
It was quite a challenge, for Pitt had beaten West Virginia twice already during the regular season, both times by double-figure advantages.
In the end, Huggins devised a three-part game plan, the first part involving the offense. They would be patient, not 3-point crazy as they sometimes can be, and they would challenge Pitt’s Mountain of Man inside, DeJuan Blair, early, trying to put him on the bench and take advantage of mismatches with whomever 5-11 Levance Fields guarded.
As always, they would hit the boards as hard as they could hit them, especially against a Pittsburgh team that makes its own living off offensive rebounds.
And finally, he decided to bring out the 1-3-1 defense that he had shown them a bit of earlier, but this time he was digging into the clip library, going back three years to watch John Beilein’s 1-3-1 in action against Pitt. He wasn’t trying to learn how to run the defense, but instead how Pitt would attack it.
If the plan he devised wasn’t as complicated as the Allies invasion of Europe on D-Day, it was no less effective.
And while there are many reasons why a particular game plan works, in this case it was because his special freshman forward, Devin Ebanks, is so … eh, well, special.
It is difficult to understand just what Ebanks means to the Mountaineers and how bright his future is. But when you look at this one particular game, you realize that he was the man in the middle, so to speak, in all three aspects of the game plan and without him Huggins probably couldn’t have used the same plan.
On defense he is the point man on the 1-3-1, his length and athleticism making it difficult for Pitt to pass the ball cross court and difficult to launch a 3-point shot, so difficult that the Panthers failed to hit so much as one three in the game.
The result was that this team that averages 77 points a game scored just 60.
As far as the second point of the plan goes, well, Ebanks again was WVU’s leading rebounder. No, he didn’t get 18 rebounds as he did the previous evening, but he did lead the team in rebounding with seven as the Mountaineers outrebounded the Panthers, 33-27.
And then there was offense. Each game, it seems, Ebanks gets better and better with his offense. It doesn’t always show up in points, but he is shooting better than he had, he’s handling the ball better, he’s making tremendous decisions.
So why should anyone be surprised that it culminated with a career-high 20 points in this upset?
“It’s not just today,” Huggins said after the game. “Devin’s been terrific from the start of the Big East season on.”
“Devin just made play after play,” forward Da’Sean Butler said.
The fact of the matter is that it is beginning to appear that Ebanks is the second coming of Earl Clark in the Big East. Clark in the long and lean Louisville leaper whose game is spectacularly similar to the game Ebanks brought with him from New York.
Clark is 6-9, 220, and projected as a lottery pick as he leaves after this, his junior year.
Ebanks is 6-9, 205, and projected as a 220-pounder for next year.
The best way to look at the two is as freshmen. Ebanks is averaging 10 points and 8 rebounds in this freshman season. Clark’s freshman’s year at Louisville saw him average only 5.9 points and 3.8 rebounds. Clark had 12 assists and 25 turnovers while Ebanks has 87 assists and 50 turnovers.
Ebanks has had a better freshman season.
Even if you compare what Clark did through his final 16 games of his freshman year when he began to blossom, Ebanks is far ahead, Clark averaging 8.1 points and 5.2 rebounds during that time while Ebanks has averaged 12 points and 9 rebounds in his last 17 games.
So now, Huggins will be burning the midnight oil again as he goes over clips of his semifinal opponent far into the morning hours, but when he does decide to go to sleep be assured that he’ll sleep well knowing Devin Ebanks is on his side.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
