December 4, 2007
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| Joe Alexander | |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia travels to Birmingham, Ala., to meet Auburn in the inaugural Pizza Hut SEC/Big East Invitational at Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex Wednesday night.
Georgetown and Alabama square off in the first game at 7 pm.
Auburn is 4-1 this year with victories coming over Kennesaw State, Alabama State Charleston Southern and George Washington. The Tigers’ lone loss was a 77-62 decision to Tulane in the season opener.
Auburn, coached by Jeff Lebo, has used a four-guard alignment with 6-foot-7-inch forward Korvotney Barber, though the Tigers get back 6-foot-8-inch senior forward Quan Prowell who was serving a six-game suspension.
“They spread you with great spacing and try and beat you off the dribble a lot. They play up tempo and they change defenses,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said.
“This team probably plays a lot like Villanova that is guard-oriented, spread you and play off the bounce. There are a lot of ways to play the game and I think the more you see the better your frame of reference becomes and the more you are able to adapt and adjust,” Huggins said.
Playing more teams from the power conferences is something Huggins intends to do now that he has become more involved in scheduling.
“You want to play four or five teams like this and I think you want to play some other people. You need to have so many home games. That’s the nature of the business,” Huggins said. “I just assume have home games with buy-ins like Winthrop that tell you a little more about your team.
“What we have always tried to do is schedule some of the top teams from the top conferences or at least what are projected to be the top teams from the top conferences. That is what you do for your RPI and those kinds of things,” Huggins said.
West Virginia (5-1) is coming off an impressive 17-point victory over a Winthrop team that has gone to NCAA tournament play seven times since 1999.
The Mountaineers got a 19-point, 10-rebound double-double from junior forward Joe Alexander and 12 points from guard Darris Nichols. West Virginia was able to win the game by a comfortable margin despite shooting just 6 of 24 from 3-point range – something it would not have been able to do last year under John Beilein.
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West Virginia had a 40-34 advantage on the glass and has a plus-6.2 rebounding advantage through five games this year. The Mountaineers are also leading the Big East in field goal percentage defense allowing opponents to shoot just 32.4 percent per game.
Winthrop hit just 14 of 47 field goal attempts for 29.8 percent in last Saturday’s loss in Morgantown.
Auburn is coming off a 74-70 victory over George Washington in which Barber scored 21 points and grabbed nine rebounds. Barber is the team’s leading scorer averaging 16.2 points per game. The Manchester, Ga., resident is also grabbing a team-best 8.2 rebounds per contest.
Six-five guard Rasheem Barrett is averaging 13.4 points and 4.2 assists per game, while 6-4 guard Frank Tolbert shows averages of 12.2 points and 4.6 rebounds per game.
Prowell makes his 2007-08 debut after averaging 12 points and 5.3 rebounds per game last year as a junior.
“We’re not going to make a drastic change with our lineup but if we find how we are playing is not working then we will have to adjust,” Huggins said.
A large crowd is expected for both games - an environment Huggins is interested in seeing how his younger players react to.
“It is certainly something that we need to do although the reality most of these guys have done that before. The young kids obviously haven’t,” Huggins said.
The West Virginia-Auburn game will tip off at approximately 9:30 pm and will be televised nationally on ESPN2.
Briefly:
“Tuesday is going to be shooting and individual work,” said Huggins. “They’ll come in and basically just shoot the ball. Then we’ll go back to practice on Wednesday although the times are going to have to change to accommodate finals.” |
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