MORGANTOWN — The West Virginia University men’s basketball team, idle for a week, hopes to bounce back from its last-second 55-54 loss at Pitt by beating Rutgers on Thursday at the Coliseum.
Tip-off time for the Big East game is 7 p.m., and ESPN2 will televise the action nationally.
Rutgers is 10-15 overall and 2-10 in the Big East following a 72-68 overtime loss to Cincinnati last Saturday. The Mountaineers, who have lost three of their last four games, have a 16-7 record and are 5-5 in the conference competition.
WVU coach Bob Huggins thinks the Scarlet Knights’ record is misleading.
“They’ve got all their team back now,” he said Wednesday. “They didn’t have a couple of their key players early. They’re like a lot of teams in our league.
“They’re now starting to get whole. They played really well the other night (against Cincinnati).”
Huggins normally wouldn’t want a full seven days between games. But he said that span hopefully enabled everyone to heal minor aches and pains.
“We were so beat up,” he said. “We didn’t do anything on Friday or Saturday (after the Pitt game). We went light Sunday. Took Monday off and practiced Tuesday.
“”We did some good things on Sunday and on Tuesday we got a lot done.
“So now we’re going to try to score. I thought that would be a novel idea to try to score a couple goals. We spent a lot of time on half-course offense.”
Huggins thinks defense has enabled WVU to be in every game as poorly as the Mountaineers generally have shot the ball. But they actually let the Georgetown and Pitt games get away, losing both on buzzer-beating goals.
“If I told you before we went to Pitt that we were going to shoot 41 percent from the foul line and 35 percent from the field and get outrebounded and still had a chance to win the game, you’d say I was crazy,” he said. “My fear is if we extend the defense too far and give up some easy baskets, can we get easy baskets in return?
“At this point I’m not really confident that we can. So we’ve let a couple get away. But we’ve been in virtually every game except Cincinnati.”
Joe Alexander, 6-8 junior forward, leads WVU in both scoring (14.3) and rebounding (5.7). Da’Sean Butler is next at 12.4 ppg and 5.7 rpg. Alex Ruoff, 6-6 junior guard, and Darris Nichols, 6-3 senior point guard, also are scoring double digits at 14.1 and 12.2, respectively.
Rutgers, coached by Fred Hill, has two starters averaging double figures in scoring. Those are JR Inman, 6-9 junior forward, at 13.0 and Anthony Farmer, 6-1 junior guard, at 10.4. Hamady Ndiaye, 6-11 sophomore center, has averages of 5.4 ppg and 6.6 rpg.
This is the 67th meeting of the two schools is a series dating back to 1918-19.
Since they have been members of the Big East, West Virginia owns a 12-7 edge in the rivalry. Huggins is 5-0 against the Scarlet Knights.
“We’ve been beat up,” Huggins said. “And we’ve had a lot of guys play heavy minutes. I hope the break helps us. I thought we were very good a couple days and got a lot done.”
Mickey Furfari
WVU men hoping to bounce back as they host Rutgers
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