The West Virginia Mountaineers finished the season 27-6 with a 13-5 record in Big East play. West Virginia won their first Big East Tournament in school history and were assigned a #2 seed in the East Region bracket by the NCAA Selection Committee. Many felt that West Virginia’s performance over the 2nd half of the season culminating in the Big East Tournament victory was worthy of a #1 NCAA Tournament seed. West Virginia had big wins this season over Texas A&M, Villanova, and Georgetown. The Mountaineers had losses to Notre Dame, Pitt, and UConn. In the 2009 NCAA Tournament, West Virginia lost in the first round to Dayton. Coach Bob Huggins is 22-17 in 17 total NCAA appearances.
Coach Huggins has been at West Virginia for three years and has built the team’s size up over his three years at the school to the point you see 6’7” Da’Sean Butler at the 2 guard (17.4 ppg, 3.3 apg) and 6’9” Devin Ebanks (11.8ppg and 8.2 rpg) at the wing. The Mountaineers also have good size in the paint in Wellington Smith and Kevin Jones. Jones has been scoring 13.5 ppg and hitting 38 % from three.
The biggest weakness with West Virginia is their lack of depth at point guard. If Darryl Bryant gets into foul trouble Joe Mazulla is the only reserve capable of running the point…though not at the same level of Bryant. Casey Mitchell is also able to run the point in limited time-frames, though he has not had success in prolonged periods of having to run the show when Bryant has to sit out.
West Virginia scores 74.7 points per game and gives up 64.8 points a game on defense. The Mountaineers shoot 43.7 % from the field and knock back 7.3 3′s per game at an average of 34.8% per game. They shoot 69.4 % from the charity stripe and have an approximate assist to turnover ration of 1.5 to 1. Their rebounding margin is 6.6 rebounds per game over the course of the season.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
