By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN — The first thing any West Virginia University player wanted to do after defeating Villanova in as tough and competitive a game as they have played all year was to get some rest. The long grind that is a regular season under Bob Huggins had taken its toll and a day off or maybe even two seemed like just what the foot doctor ordered.
But the second thing they wanted to do was to get back out there and play a game of basketball.
The Big East Tournament was now calling them and running as hot as they’ve run and with so much ahead of them, they wanted to go out and take a bite out of the Big Apple.
The problem was, they couldn’t do it.
See, they had played so well in the regular season that earned a double-bye in the Big East Tournament.
With a 16-team conference, the Big East could have just set up a 16-team bracket and played it out, four games to the title. However, they felt the right way to do it was “reward” the top four teams with a double bye into the quarterfinals.
That certainly, they felt, would give them a huge advantage and guarantee an attractive national TV weekend of basketball.
Then they put in practice last year and on the first day two of the four teams granted double-byes were upset, which had coaches scrambling to figure out if this really was a good thing and how they could best deal with it.
West Virginia, by the way, pulled off one of those upsets, stunning No. 2 Pitt in a memorable game.
At the time, Bob Huggins was quite fine with the double-bye, having used it to his advantage in ambushing Pitt.
Now, however, the Nike is on the other foot and Huggins wants no part of a double-bye, even though he’s got it.
“Tournament play is hard,” Huggins admitted. “They’re talking about we get a double-bye and get to play Marquette or Louisville? This league is so hard.”
At least you are fresh when you play them, fresher than whomever you play, which may have one or two games already under their belt in the tournament.
Huggins doesn’t care.
“I don’t like the double-bye,” he said. “Okay, if you can get through the first game it definitely gives you a better chance to win the tournament, but the first one is the key.”
Tournament play, you see, is different than regular season play. There’s that finality about it, one loss and you’re done.
Everything is magnified, you are more nervous.
“Those other guys are in tournament mode,” Huggins said.
Many coaches like to have their teams play their way into a tournament, take on a team it
can win almost as a workout before going nose-to-nose with Rick Pitino and Louisville or someone like that, especially after they have been tournament toughened by playing a game or two.
The arena is strange, the background different. You need time to get used to depth perception in your shooting, to say nothing of sleeping in a hotel room for an extended period of time, heading off to a different gym to work out and, mostly, just hanging around waiting for your time to come.
Jamie Dixon, the Pitt coach who last year lost after having the double-bye and finds himself in a similar situation this year, isn’t against it the way Huggins is.
“If you go by last year’s record in (the Big East Tournament, the double-bye) doesn’t look like it would be that big of an advantage,” Dixon said. “But I would think it would be. (A top-four finish) is something you want to strive to have for obvious reasons.
“At the end of the day, you’re going to have to play a good team in our conference [tournament] no matter where you end up.”
That is true, just as it’s true that winning five games to get there for teams that get no bye is a tremendous burden.
After never having had it happen before, two teams in the past four years have won four games to win the title — No. 7 seed Pitt in 2008 and No. 9 seed Syracuse in 2006, which was Gerry McNamara’s magical year.
“It’s been done (four wins in four days); it’s possible,” Dixon said. “Five games make it more difficult. But nothing’s impossible. That’s been proven.”
Here’s betting you can’t find a coach that wants to try it.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
