By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — It is too easy to call West Virginia’s men’s basketball team’s situation a trap today as it goes into Madison Square Garden, carrying with it a No. 6 national ranking against a St. John’s team whose overall 12-9 record belies its 2-7 league mark.
This is a game the Mountaineers know they should win, whether it is played in Madison Square Garden, as it is, or in Louie Carnesseca’s living room, but circumstances have transpired to make it a tricky proposition.
It seems that the Mountaineers are coming off an emotional high, having shellacked their Backyard Brawl rival Pitt at home on one end of this game and just two days later they return home for what figures to be the game of the season, a battle against No. 2 Villanova.
And who knows what will transpire on Saturday, should WVU win. Perhaps Kansas will be upset and Villanova will come to Morgantown as the nation’s No. 1 team.
Toss into the mix the travel to and from New York in a snowy situation and a student section situation and you just don’t know where things are heading, but rest assured none of it would indicate the Mountaineers will come out and take care of business at the Garden without some prodding.
How does a coach, a veteran, successful coach like WVU’s Bob Huggins approach such a situation?
Do you push your team harder to avoid an upset, do you downplay matters, try to relax the team, knowing if you can get past St. John’s without turning it into a holy war you have a better chance to get the juices flowing from a fresher team against Villanova?
“We try not to change,” Huggins said. “I’m not one of whose guys who talk about this or that being the biggest game of all time. You take every game the same – respect everyone, fear none of them.”
In the case of St. John’s, if West Virginia plays its game it has, in the immortal words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, “nothing to fear but fear itself.”
St. John’s is hardly in the class with WVU, D.J. Kennedy being its leading scorer at 15.5 points a game but no one else in double figures. And coming off an 81-72 loss to Rutgers isn’t going to improve its confidence any, either.
It doesn’t help their confidence, either, to know WVU has won the last nine meetings between the teams.
And just to complicate matters for St. John’s, this is a homecoming for virtually the entire WVU starting lineup, all from the New York-New Jersey area, meaning they’ll be putting it on for friends and family.
That, of course, includes point guard Truck Bryant, from St. Raymond’s High in the Bronx.
The Truck looks forward to every trip to New York and especially to the Garden.
“I used to go there and see the Knicks play,” said Bryant.
And no, Spike Lee has never invited him down to his seats.
“I wish,” he said, laughing.
Hopefully, his friends and family who come to watch him play Saturday will get better seats than he had as kid.
The game will mark freshman Deniz Kilicli’s second WVU appearance after a successful debut against Pitt in which he hit all four shots he took, scoring nine points in seven in seven minutes.
Da’Sean Butler enters the game needing nine points to pass Greg Jones and move into fourth place on WVU’s all-time list.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
