By Mickey Furfari
MORGANTOWN — The West Virginia University men’s basketball team had little difficulty disposing of the Longwood Lancers, 86-54, Thursday night in a first-round game of the Las Vegas Invitational Tournament at the Coliseum.
But many in the crowd of 6,917 started heading for the exits early in the second half. Apparently they and seen more than enough of the contest in which there were 47 personal fouls, 65 free throws and a two-team total of 44 turnovers — 23 by the home team.
It just wasn’t the type of game in which the average fan could become excited, except possibly for a flare-up by one of the Longwood players just as the second half got under way.
In making their record 2-0, the Mountaineers shot 42.3 percent (26-of-56) for the game while limiting the Lancers to 30.4 percent (17-of-56). WVU controlled the boards for a 54-27 advantage in rebounding, but converted only 29 of 44 free throws to 17 of 21 by the Virginia team.
The loss evened Longwood’s record at 2-2.
WVU coach Bob Huggins obviously wasn’t very happy with his team’s performance, and he kept his players longer than usual before releasing them for media interviews.
“I told them we can’t turn it over 23 times,” he said. “We can’t work as hard as we did defensively and have more turnovers than our opposition (21). They were careless turnovers.
“I think at the end of the day what they all appreciate about our staff is we don’t lie to them. We didn’t go and tell them that they weren’t what they were. On our coaching staff, we have about 100 years worth of coaching experience.
“These are good guys. They are wonderful guys. We don’t have one jerk in the bunch. They worked like crazy this summer. What we do weight training-wise is hard, but they love it because they see results.”
Longwood coach Mike Gilliam said, “First and foremost, you have to give some credit where credit is due in situations like this. That’s not only a long and athletic team, as is traditionally he case with Coach Huggins, but also very well coached.
“They played very, very good man-to-man defense. A bit different than their teams in the past, they tried to create some more turnovers with full-court defense and some traps. Honestly, they don’t need to do that.
“They are very long and take away the first pass. They help, and help the help very well. When you have the chance maybe to get inside the defense, there’s always somebody reacting to what you’re doing.”
Reserve Darryl Bryant scored a team-high 16 points to lead the winning attack Da’Sean Butler and Alex Ruoff were the only other Mountaineers to hit double digits with 12 points each.
Devin Ebanks, Wellington Smith, Ruoff and Kevin Jones had seven rebounds each.
Dana Smith scored a game-high 17 points for Longwood. Ryan Bogan chipped in 11.
West Virginia led from start to finish. The score at halftime was 43-19. The largest lead of 33 points was realized several times during the night.
Joe Mazzulla, the starting point guard, lamented that “we just weren’t focused. Sometimes you do play to the opponent’s level. I think we were just not focused tonight.”
The Mountaineers face Delaware State in Charleston next Tuesday night in another tournament game, then the scene switches to Las Vegas later in that week.
