West Virginia 61, New Mexico 60

Boxscore

West Virginia 73, Duke 67

Boxscore

WVU vs. New Mexico Preview

 

The WVU ladies, a #5 seed in the famed Spokane regional of the NCAA women’s tournament. After a third-place Big East finish and a 24-7 record, WVU gets to try to continue the school’s dominance over the desert southwest by facing New Mexico. I don’t know if the 5-12 matchup is as dreaded in women’s basketball as it is in men’s, but it certainly doesn’t help that WVU will be playing in…Albuquerque. In the home gymnasium of New Mexico. How does that happen? In the men’s tournament, no team can play where it hosts it home games. Why is it allowed in the women’s tournament? There goes the dream of the women’s tournament being equal with the men’s. The NCAA screams for equality and shoves Title IX down everybody’s throats, but then comes the time to make a bracket and they pull over a screw job like this. Congratulations, you saved New Mexico a little bit on travel costs. You’re also making WVU fly across the country on two consecutive weekends, assuming they can get past New Mexico and the winner of Vanderbilt-Montana.

I’m not going to break down the game here, I know absolutely nothing about New Mexico’s team. But this is Yinka Sanni’s time to shine on a national stage, she needs to play like the unstoppable force she has seemed to be at times this season. I doubt the Lobos can throw anything at these seven seniors that they haven’t seen before.

For some more reading, here’s the quintessential Mickey Furfari piece and a much better piece by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Kevin Gorman. I realize they may have more resources available, but it is truly sad how much better the Pittsburgh fish wrappers cover WVU at times than the state newspapers.

Meanwhile, here are 1/2/3/4/5/6/7 articles from this week’s ABQ Journal. It appears people actually care about women’s basketball in the Land of Enchantment, which is probably why they are hosting a regional as a 12-seed while WVU travels across the country.

Tonight’s game will tip-off just after 8 p.m. Eastern with ESPN2 providing the television coverage.

Eight Things About Duke

• I, for one, was surprised to find out that WVU and Duke have met 23 times on the hardwood. Duke holds a 17-6 advantage. Only one of those meetings has come in my lifetime, and it was a second-round NCAA tournament game in Greensboro, in 1989. In other words, another tourney home game for the Blue Devils. This was the Danny Ferry/Christian Laettner/Quin Synder/Alaa Abdelnaby era of Duke basketball, just before they started going on back-to-back championship runs, against the Chris and Hubie Brooks era Mountaineers. Duke came out on top that day, 70-63.
• WVU’s last win against Duke came in 1977 in Morgantown, during the forgettable Joedy Gardner era, one of Gardner’s best wins ever, against Mike Gminski-led Duke.
• Remember Bucky Waters? He coached at West Virginia for four seasons from 1966-69, before leaving to take over at coach of Duke. The very next season, the Mountaineers visited Duke and fell, 82-70. In four years at Duke, Bucky went 63-45 and failed to make the NCAA tournament.
• From 1950 to 1953, Duke and WVU were conference foes in the Southern Conference. WVU was 1-3 against the Devils in SoCon games.
• Coming back to the current era of Blue Devils basketball, 6′4″ DaMarcus Nelson is the leading scorer and rebounder this season at 14.8 at 5.9 per game. He is the only senior on the squad. Freshman Kyle Singler (6′8″, 220) , sophomores Gerald Henderson (6′4″ 210) and John Scheyer (6′5″, 180) and junior Greg Paulus (6′1″, 185) all average above 10 points a game in the balanced Duke attack.
• The Blue Devils are all talented shooters as each of eight regular players carries a 50% or higher effective field goal rate. They are not a great rebounding team, and they do not have tremendous big men. Brian Zoubek is available off the bench at 7′1″ but no other player is about 6′8″.
• Don’t expect a lot of turnovers in the game, as Duke and WVU had the lowest number of turnovers per game in their respective conferences. WVU’s 10.9 average is one of the tops in the entire nation, while Duke rates at 13.4 giveaways per game.
• Duke will want to move the tempo much more than WVU. The Blue Devils average 75.6 possessions per 40 minutes, while WVU averages 68.1. However, teams that have beaten the Dukies this season have done so by picking up the pace, with teams like Pitt, Miami and Wake Forest running well over 80 possessions in those wins. Duke is 5-0 in games with under 70 possessions this season, so if WVU wants to slow it down they will need maximum efficiency in each possession.

NCAA Second Round Saturday Picks

Yet once more, lines are provided by PinnacleSports.com “for entertainment purposes only.”

Duke (-3.5) vs. West Virginia: People love to bet against Duke, so I’m sure Vegas knew what they were doing in creating this line. We all now know that Duke narrowly escaped the upset bid by Belmont in the first round. Duke is almost certainly destined to play better in this game. But WVU has a lot of the same offensive elements that Belmont was using to give Duke fits — outside game, good passing and ability to clear the lane and play outside the paint. Duke is quite a different opponent for WVU than Arizona, and I think they will have to lean a lot more on Joe Alexander in this game than in the first round. While you can’t underestimate the chances of Duke getting a extra call or twenty their way, I just like the karma that will surround WVU in this nationally televised game. Of course I’m taking WVU as the first team to punch its ticket to the Sweet Sixteen. WVU 84, Duke 79.

Wisconsin (-4.5) vs. Kansas State: Wisconsin should win this game easily on paper, but I think Beasley and Walker will give the Badgers fits. I really didn’t expect KSU to beat USC, but now that they have I think they’re prime for the upset of Wisconsin. KSU 70, Wisconsin 65.

Xavier (-3.5) vs. Purdue: I think the Muskies will have an easier time with Purdue than they did with Georgia. Xavier 84, Purdue 68.

Washington State (-2.5) vs. Notre Dame: This is a very evenly matched game of a 4 and 5 seed who won very impressively in the first round. A four-seed isn’t usually considered a sleeper, but with Washington State pretty much out of the consienceness of most fans and media, I think WSU is a team that could make a deep run. Washington State 61, Notre Dame 55.

Stanford (-3) vs. Marquette: Post play or guard play? The old adage says that guard play wins in the tournament. Marquette 82, Stanford 77.

Kansas (-13.5) vs. UNLV: I’m surprised the line is this high after UNLV destroyed Kent State in the first round, but Kansas has shown nothing but championship-quality basketball for the last several weeks. Kansas 85, UNLV 76.

UCLA (-10) vs. Texas A&M: You know, if an Aggie came across a Bruin in the woods…UCLA 96, Texas A&M 82.

Pitt (-2) vs. Michigan State: The Spartans are a lot more of a challenge than Oral Roberts. Michigan State 76, Pitt 62.