Looking Closer At West Virginia

Looking Closer At West Virginia

Yes, the Mountaineers are served by the best Butler in the country.  Yes, they are the most relentless rebounding team in the land.  Yes, they are the Big East Champions.  But why are they a national title contender?  Well ... because they're tougher than you.

By GORDIE JONES
Basketball Times Online

West Virginia coach Bob Huggins has spent the last few days whining about being placed in the NCAA Tournament’s East Region, across the bracket from Kentucky. Fair enough. It’s a tough draw. Let’s move on.  
And really, the Mountaineers always seem to do things the hard way; why should it be any different now? 
They have the best closer this side of Mariano Rivera in senior forward Da’Sean Butler, who has sunk no fewer than six game-winning shots this season. The latest was an acrobatic leaner in traffic in the closing seconds of last Saturday’s Big East Tournament championship game against Georgetown, which lifted his team to a 60-58 victory. 
The road to victory that night was paved with dozens of bricks -- many of which the Mountaineers reclaimed. The conference’s best offensive rebounding team during the regular season, they turned 20 such boards into 21 second-chance points against the Hoyas, while outrebounding Georgetown 38-24 in all.  
Look at it another way: The Mountaineers missed 35 shots in the game -- 34 from the field (in 55 attempts), and one from the foul line (in 15 attempts) -- and retrieved all but 15 of them. 
“You shoot 38 percent and win, you’re doing something right,” Huggins said afterward. 
You would think that would serve his team well at this time of year, wherever and (ahem) whomever they’re playing. 
The Mountaineers are not overly big; Huggins rotates a bunch of 6-7 guys up front. But they are relentless. 
And if they aren’t, they make the acquaintance of one Andy Kettler. 
Kettler is the team’s strength and conditioning coach. A scan of the team’s media guide shows him to be a grim-faced man with a shaved head -- making him much like, well, virtually every other strength and conditioning coach in America. 
Any time a player screws up in a rebounding drill, Kettler puts him on a treadmill and cranks the thing all the way up. 
“It’s (for) about 44 seconds, (at) 15 miles per hour,” reported senior forward Wellington Smith. 
Sounds hellish. 
And maybe Smith was kidding, maybe not. But he also said Kettler is hoping to get a new treadmill, one that can be turned up even further -- to, like, 18 mph. 
“I think it’s coming soon, but I’m not going to be here,” Smith said with a laugh. 
So it would not be inaccurate to say that the only way the Mountaineers get anywhere is by running in place -- and running really fast, at that. 

“I’m always on the treadmill,” said Smith, who matched his career high of 10 rebounds against the Hoyas, six of those coming at the offensive end, while scoring 11 points.

It wasn’t all that long ago that it appeared his career might be at a standstill. Coach John Beilein departed for Michigan after Smith’s freshman year (2006-07), and Huggins replaced him. Some guys left, or were asked to. Smith stayed, though he admitted to being “nervous about having to start over, and having to perform for another head coach.” 
But Huggins, he said, took him in as if he was “one of his guys,” and the 6-7 Smith became a valuable role player. He has started the last two years, but heading into last Saturday’s game he was the team’s fifth-leading scorer (6.6) and fourth-leading rebounded (3.9). 
He was also coming off a 1-for-7, three-point clunker in WVU’s semifinal victory over Notre Dame. Smith said Huggins worked with him on his shooting form, which might have helped against Georgetown. Same for the fact that there were several friends and family members among the capacity crowd in Madison Square Garden; like the team’s other four starters, Smith, a native of Summit, N.J., hails from the New York metropolitan area. 
Smith missed his first two shots against the Hoyas but made four of his final five in the first half. The last of those was, significantly, a tip-in of Deniz Kilicli’s miss two seconds before intermission. 
Smith’s nine-point, six-rebound effort was, he admitted, possibly the best half he has played since high school. Especially since he was also guarding Georgetown’s outstanding center, Greg Monroe, at the other end. Monroe, coming off a 23-point game in a semifinal victory over Marquette, had five in the half, 11 overall. 
And in the first 20 minutes Smith and his teammates established a beachhead on the boards, reclaiming nine of their misses. They also led on the scoreboard, 32-28. 
“They’re just persistent,” Hoyas coach John Thompson III said. “They have guys that go after it.” 
They continued in that same vein in the second half. At one point Monroe, seated on the apron of the court after yet another multi-shot possession resulted in a Hoyas foul, pounded the floor in frustration. 
Moments later Smith missed a turnaround jumper from the left block. His momentum carried him out of bounds, but he scrambled back into the lane, snagged the rebound and scored over Julian Vaughn. 
Next possession, he chased down Butler’s miss near the left elbow, leading to a 3-pointer by Casey Mitchell. That put the Moutaineers up 43-34 with 12:18 to play. 
Georgetown rallied, but in the end Butler worked his magic. In the end, the Mountaineers had done things the hard way, same as always. 
No reason to expect that to change now.

Photo Credit: www.msnsportsnet.com/