March 13, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Frank Young scored 17 points and Alex Ruoff added 14 points and nine assists to help West Virginia to a 74-50 victory over Delaware State in an NIT opening round game at the WVU Coliseum Tuesday night.
 | ||
| West Virginia senior Frank Young scored a team-high 17 points Tuesday night against Delaware State. The Mountaineers won the game 74-50. All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks | |
Coach John Beilein got his first victory at West Virginia against Delaware State on Nov. 22, 2002. Tuesday night the fifth-year coach got his 100th against the Hornets.
“When we came in here five years ago (100 wins) was a number … we were hoping to win one game,” Beilein said. “We’re really happy to show that type of progress with what we’re doing.”
The Mountaineers were never really threatened after the 10-minute mark, going up 17-7 and then using a 22-6 run to end the half up 26, 39-13.
“I was worried a little bit, not because of a hangover from the (Louisville) game, I was just worried because we hadn’t been into March play with most of these guys,” Beilein said. “We went out and sure enough we got off to a good start.”
Delaware State (21-12) showed the effects of playing its championship game last Saturday night, having just a day to prepare for West Virginia’s unorthodox 1-3-1 zone defense and motion offense.
“They won the MEAC conference at 16-2, they won a bunch of road games, they won at Buffalo and they ended up losing by three at Baylor,” Beilein said. “That team has been around and they’ve got a good, young coach that has that program going in the right direction.
“They present some problems because we knew they were going to shorten the game and we knew that they were not going to let us run our stuff,” Beilein said. “So when they do that we had to adjust to the traps and things like that. We’re pretty good at that. They come at you pretty good and we only had seven turnovers.”
West Virginia shot 55.6 percent for the game (30 of 54) and had 20 assists on 30 baskets. The Hornets were 6 of 25 from the field in the first half for 24 percent and was just 6 of 29 from 3-point distance for the game for 20.7 percent. The Hornets did not attempt a single foul shot.
“This right now is about advancing in March. By Thursday, a lot of teams will be packing their bags and we get to play again at 9 o’clock Thursday,” Beilein said.
Jamie Smalligan came off the bench to score 13 points and grab four rebounds for the Mountaineers. The 7-foot center was 6 of 6 from the floor.
“Jamie cleaned up around the glass,” Beilein said.
The victory was West Virginia’s 11th straight non-conference win at the Coliseum and the Mountaineers are now 30-2 in non-conference homes games under Beilein. West Virginia now faces the winner of tonight’s Alabama-Massachusetts game at the Coliseum Thursday night at 9 pm in a game that will be televised nationally on ESPNU.
“I will probably go home and watch it but I prefer to watch it by tape,” said Beilein. “(The assistants) will bring it to my house late tonight I’ll watch it all tomorrow morning. We’ll have to go light tomorrow because it’s a quick turnaround. It’s just like we would do if we were in the NCAA tournament. All right, we just beat (Creighton) and now we’ve got Wake Forest. You can’t go out and practice real hard tomorrow.”
The ticket policy for Thursday’s game will remain the same: regular season ticket holders will be able to purchase tickets through 6 pm Wednesday night. Non-season ticket holders can go on the web and order upper-level tickets beginning tonight by logging onto WVUGAME.com.
WVU students can begin purchasing their tickets at 10 am on Thursday at the Mountaineer Ticket Office for $4. The first 500 students will again receiver their tickets free courtesy of Coca-Cola.
“We had a great crowd here tonight and hopefully we’ll have 3 or 4,000 more for Alabama or UMass and see what we can do in that situation,” Beilein said.
Print View 
Email
No comments:
Post a Comment