Happy Leap Year Day!

I felt compelled to write a post today, for no good reason other than you can only do it once every four years. So here’s some leap year knowledge being dropped on y’all courtesy of WVUStats.com

• WVU men’s basketball is 4-2 all-time in games on February 29.

• Their last game on this date came in the Gale Catlett era, against Pitt in 1996 at Fitzgerald Field House in Pittsburgh, a loss of 83-63. That was the Ralph Willard era of Pitt basketball which was pretty unmemorable for me anyway. Terry McCullough led the way with 19 that night, while a young Vonteego Cummings (one of my all-time top hated Pitt basketballers) hit for 15 points off the bench. Greg Simpson led WVU with 22. That was WVU’s first season in the Big East and they finished a disappointing 12-15 although they set the tone with young guys that were the pieces of the NCAA tournament run in 1998.
• In 1992, WVU hosted St. Joseph’s in an A-10 matchup. Chris Leonard hit 7 threes and finished with 28 points en route to a 95-82 victory over the Hawks. Remember those A-10 days when games in the 90’s or even 100’s were not much out of the ordinary? Now we see a lot more games in the 50’s or 60’s. 1992 was the year WVU finished 20-12 after losing to Missouri in the first round of the NCAA’s.

• Before that, you have to go back to 1980 and a matchup with Rutgers in the Eastern 8 tournament in Pittsburgh. We’re getting to before my time now, but Lowes Moore scored 27 to lead WVU to a 77-66 victory. Despite a 15-14 record, WVU made it to the Eastern 8 championship game before losing to Villanova.
• In 1968, WVU faced East Carolina in Charlotte as part of the Southern Conference tournament. Bucky Waters’ Mountaineers won the game 76-71 behind Carey Bailey’s 22 points. This is definitely way before my time.
• Go back almost 30 years before that for the 1936 matchup between WVU and Duquesne in Morgantown. WVU is coached by Marshall “Little Sleepy” Glenn and the Dukes are led by Chick Davies. Babe Barna scored 12 points in a 35-33 nailbiter victory for the Mountaineers.
• 1908. Definitely not a year I remember. One hundred years ago today, the Mountaineers played for the first time ever on Leap Year Day, squaring off against the mighty Parkersburg YMCA. Even worse, WVU gets schooled by the Village People on that day by a 28-24 margin. Richard Nebinger must have been the only Mountaineer who showed up to play that day as he recorded 16 of the 24 points for WVU. James Jenkins finished 3-7 in his only season as Mountaineer head coach and went out losing the last six games. The game at Parkersburg was the end of a brutal four-games-in-four-days stretch (who was the A.D. that scheduled that up?) in which the gold and blue visited Bethany College in the northern panhandle, Ohio U. and Marietta College in eastern Ohio before the YMCA matchup.

WVU womens’ basketball has played thrice on Leap Year Day:

• February 29, 2000. The McDonough Arena on the campus of Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Two Hoyas top 20 points led by Katie Smrcka-Duffy with 27 and Nathalie Bourderau with 20. WVU is outrebounded 42-24. Mandy Ronay musters 12 points to lead the Mountaineers in a 76-47 blowout loss. God the Alexis Basil years were brutal. WVU finished 6-22 overall and 1-15 in the Big East. The asbestos debacle at the WVU Coliseum that led to the WVU ladies playing home games at Morgantown High School probably bought Basil one more season.

• In 1992, WVU visited Duquesne and thrashed the Lady Dukes 81-65 behind 22 points and 15 assists from point guard Rosemary Kosiorek, probably the best overall player in Mountaineer history. The Mountaineers were 26-4 that season and ranked as high as 11th in the AP womens basketball polls, but went out in the second round of the NCAA’s to the University of Virginia.
• In 1980, the Lady Mountaineers faced Indiana of PA on the road and came away with an 88-86 victory. No details available at press time.

Three Points: WVU at DePaul

 85

 73

I. Draelon Burns: It doesn’t matter who you play or what the circumstances, if you give up 31 points to a player like WVU did tonight with Burns something is wrong. But Burns had a pretty amazing performance after scoring no points in almost the entire first half to end with 31. The game was basically out of hand when Burns did most of his damage, with DePaul only drawing within 5 once in the second half, but he was nailing jumpers and hitting threes off the dribble with a defender in his face. He is not a guy you hear much about on the Big East scene but he is averaging about 17 points a game. I think DePaul gets lost in the shuffle in Big East because they’re not on the east coast and they aren’t as competitive as the other midwestern teams like Marquette, Notre Dame and Louisville.

II. Foul shooting: It was great to see this bug bite somebody else as the Blue Demons were 14-of-33 from the line, including a 0-for-7 performance from freshman forward Mac Koshwal. Koshwal had a chance to be a machine for DePaul tonight. I know he grabbed a ton of rebounds but with that bad performance from the line, he was reminding more of Shaq than Mac. Meanwhile WVU was a pedestrian 20-of-26 from the charity stripe.

III. Joe Alexander: Alexander had a nice strong start to the game which seems to be a key ingredient for the team to draw confidence from. He hit a couple open jumpers to start out then we also got Alex Ruoff involved with a nice three early on. If those shots don’t fall it simply changes the whole complexion of any game. I still don’t like how much foul trouble Alexander and Wellington Smith and some of our other guys got into. I think looking into the UConn game that could really hurt us. So let’s rejoice at a Big East road win which is a solid victory. Now we need to have a good showing in the Nutmeg State on Saturday.

Boxscore

Football Schedule Breakdown

The Big East (finally) released the 2008 football schedule today. Today is a bad day to be a hotel reservation agent in Morgantown and parts nearby, I would imagine. Keep this link handy for The Mountain Top’s very own rundown of the WVU schedule. We think it’s pretty cool. And if you want to see how the schedules for the rest of the Big East teams shape up, check here.

Just my few thoughts at first glance of the schedule. First off, we will know the fate of our season more or less before we get a chance to avenge the Pitt and USF losses as those are the last two games of the season. It would be a long way to go to 10-0 but if that happened, you couldn’t ask for a more dramatic build-up to the end of the season. I was at first a little upset about the Auburn game at home on a mid-October Thursday. I am still a little upset with it, also it and Colorado being our two biggest non-conference games and both showing up on Thursday nights. I am pleasantly pleased to see no other weeknight games on our conference slate (Thanksgiving Friday vs. Pitt is kind of a special case so I’m not counting that.)  We get a run of four consecutive home games in September/October, so we go well over a month without hitting the road, which probably isn’t optimal. Then we face a tough November facing maybe the three best teams in the conference on the road in that month. We get another huge home game on the first December weekend. I for one love that idea even though it didn’t turn out so well last season. All in all I think we have a nice balanced schedule with plenty of off-weeks and really, nothing too out of the ordinary. And we don’t get short-weeked going into our Thursday night games which has always been a concern of mine.

WVU 80, Providence 53

I hate to be negative in general and pessimistic with this team, but I still look at this game as what it was, another win at home over a Big East bottom-feeder. Surely this has to be the end of the line for Tim Welsh at Providence. I thought he was done a couple years ago but miraculously kept his job then. Now they will likely not make it to Madison Square Garden and I think they are definitely looking for a new coach for next season. Back to WVU, I really didn’t see anything in this game that changes my mind about their fate. They won by 27, you have to be pleased with that. And for another bright side, WVU has now clinched a Big East tournament berth no matter what happens down the stretch. Boxscore

Saturday Rundown: Basketball Woes

It’s been pretty lean for a couple of weeks here at the Mountain Top. Hopefully we can get back into the swing of things soon. But that said, I want to get back into men’s basketball again for today.

Has Huggins lost this team? Listening to his post-game comments from Villanova, I think there’s a good possibility. It sounds like the team has simply stopped responding to his coaching. The team is so enamored with shooting that it seems their self-confidence and self-worth are completely tied to the jump shot.  WVU wins when the shots are falling, but not for that reason alone. When the shots are falling, our guys are doing the other things you need to do to win. Namely, they are playing hard on the defensive end, protecting the ball and crashing the boards as much as they can. A bad shooting night leads to mental lapses, turnovers and bad rebounding.

Here are the numbers to hash this out, for Big East games this season:

Villanova 78, WVU 56

Just an all-out lack of effort on the part of WVU in Philly tonight. It’s pretty disgusting, and that’s about all you can say about it at this point. I want to further examine this, tomorrow perhaps, but for tonight; just the facts, ma’am.