Associated Press
November 15, 2008 09:15 pm
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MORGANTOWN (AP) — It didn’t take long for someone on Bob Huggins’ bench to help soften the loss of Joe Alexander at West Virginia.
Granted, forward Da’Sean Butler’s 38 points came in an exhibition game last week against NAIA member Mountain State.
It’s been 25 years since a Mountaineer has scored that many points in an official game. Alexander, now with the Milwaukee Bucks, averaged 24 points over his final nine games, including a career-high 34 in the Big East tournament last year.
So on a roster with only one senior and eight freshmen and sophomores, it was refreshing to see Butler take over. The game was meaningless, but the effort wasn’t and it caught Huggins’ attention.
“I hope he gets 38 every game,” Huggins said.
Actually, Huggins doubts Butler can keep up the pace. Butler was the team’s third-leading scorer last season behind Alexander and guard Alex Ruoff and was second in rebounding next to Alexander.
“I don’t think we have a guy who could do what Joe did on a consistent basis,” Huggins said.
That means spreading the scoring responsibility, and Huggins envisions as many as five players averaging in double figures.
Trouble is, Butler and Ruoff are the only returning starters to a team that made an improbable run to the third round of the NCAA tournament. Only three other veterans saw double-digit minutes per game.
One of them is guard Joe Mazzulla, who will make his first start at point guard on Saturday against Elon.
“Joe is playing with a lot of confidence and maybe worked as hard as anybody we had all summer to get better,” Huggins said.
Mazzulla averaged 5.8 points for the season but came up big in the tournament. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski called Mazzulla the game MVP after he had 13 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists as the Mountaineers eliminated the Blue Devils in the second round.
“I think my role is more defined this year and makes it easier for me to go out and play with more confidence,” Mazzulla said. “I have to make sure everyone is in their places, make sure everyone’s cool, calm and collected.
“It’s going to take time a little time to get to that level that we need to play at every single day.”
Huggins will ask four newcomers to help get the Mountaineers through a rugged Big East schedule that has seven teams ranked in the Top 25.
Three of the newbies are freshmen — forwards Devin Ebanks and Kevin Jones and guard Truck Bryant — and the other is 6-foot-10 junior-college transfer Dee Proby.
“They’re going to play a lot of minutes,” Huggins said. “The good thing about our team is we’re a lot deeper than we were a year ago.”
None of West Virginia’s expected starters are taller than the 6-9 Ebanks or heavier than 230-pound junior Wellington Smith.
“I like our team. We’re just small,” Huggins said. “We’ve got sort of the same issues that we had a year ago.”
That could be a good thing.
West Virginia is picked to finish ninth in the league. The Mountaineers were 10th in the preseason poll in Huggins’ first season, and they went a surprising 26-11, losing to Xavier in overtime in the West Regional semifinals.
His alma mater then rewarded Huggins with a 10-year contract to keep him at WVU through his 65th birthday.
In turn, Huggins rewarded his players with that same old blunt coaching style and insistence that they beef up in the weight room. And that familiar treadmill is back at practice. Players who mess up are asked to go for a ride.
Which is what Huggins, who has gone to the NCAA tournament in all but one of the last 16 seasons, is sure to give West Virginia fans.
“We can be as good as we allow ourselves to be,” Mazzulla said.
Young Hokies are facing a new concept: expectations
By HANK KURZ Jr.
AP Sports Writer
BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) — When Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg looks at his team, he sees many reasons for excitement this season, and beyond.
The Hokies are young, but it’s a veteran youth, talented enough that expectations are high for Virginia Tech in the rugged Atlantic Coast Conference. In the preseason, ACC media picked the Hokies for sixth.
It matters not, Greenberg said before beginning his sixth season.
“We didn’t talk about ‘what ifs’ last year when we were picked last or next-to-last,” the ACC coach of the year said. “We’re sure not going to talk about ‘what ifs’ just because people have a different opinion of us.”
With a new basketball training facility being built on campus, Greenberg quipped this week that his team is the “homeless version of the Boston Celtics. We’ve got the big three, and those guys need to produce each and every night, and then they need to make other people better.
“If they do that, we have a chance to be successful.”
For the Hokies, success in 2009 means one thing: an NCAA tournament berth, the one that never came last season when they finished 21-14.
“We were that close to (a bid); we didn’t get it,” senior swingman A.D. Vassallo said. “This year, we definitely should be in there.”
Greenberg’s big three includes Vassallo, a streaky shooter who can carry a team and who should be largely unaffected by the fact that the 3-point line has been moved a foot back. The other two members of the top triumvirate are sophomores: point guard Malcolm Delaney, the unquestioned leader of the team, and physically transformed forward Jeff Allen.
Delaney averaged 9.6 points last season, a figure that should rise considerably, and like Vassallo has a steady green light to shoot.
Allen, a 6-foot-7 forward, dropped 30 pounds during his offseason training and was already one of the team’s top scorers and rebounders. He’s expecting the changes to significantly impact his contributions.
“More minutes. Better defense. More offense. More energy,” he said, adding that he welcomes having more expected of him this season.
Those contributions will be especially important for the Hokies, whose only significant loss from last season’s team is Deron Washington, a high flying forward and lock-down defender who defined the team’s energy.
Washington averaged 13 points, 6.5 rebounds and one freakish play. Replacing him, Greenberg said, will have to be a collective effort.
“It’s the seven rebounds. It’s the big play ability,” he said. “It’s coming off the weakside and sticking one on the backboard. It’s taking a charge. It’s getting out on the break and making a play.”
Thankfully for the Hokies, in the season after seven freshman joined the program, the options for help in the frontcourt are plentiful with options like Lewis Witcher, Dorenzo Hudson, Terrell Bell and Victor Davilla, a 6-8 freshman from Puerto Rico expected to play right away.
Powerful J.T. Thompson will also be in the mix at forward, but he’s been sidelined 4-6 weeks by hernia surgery performed Friday, the same day as the Hokies’ season-opener on Friday night against Gardner-Webb.
The Hokies discovered last year that early losses can hurt as much as late ones, and they view setbacks against Old Dominion and Richmond in the first half of the season as reasons they wound up playing in the NIT.
Lesson learned, Delaney said.
“The experience helps us out with a lot of the smaller games, like when we play Gardner-Webb or when we play Richmond again,” he said.
“We found out that teams aren’t going to lay down for us.”
And the Hokies will have several chances right off the bat to show their commitment to consistency with six games in the first 12 days, including the opener against the team that stunned Kentucky last year.
“If that doesn’t get your attention, nothing will,” Greenberg said.
It’s also critical, he said, for the team to not get caught up by being picked in the top half of the ACC, ahead of the likes of Maryland, Georgia Tech, North Carolina State, Boston College and rival Virginia.
“Other people’s perception is not reality,” he said. “Reality is what you get done on the court. Reality is what you do in practice today.
“I keep them very much grounded in the reality of who we are.”
Beginning Friday night, the Hokies planned to show everyone else.
Cavaliers looking at post-Singletary rebuilding
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Dave Leitao enters his fourth season as coach at Virginia feeling like he’s starting all over, building from the ground up.
And why not?
For his first three seasons, Leitao had Sean Singletary as his point guard, a virtual coach on the floor and reliable big-moment performer. He also had big man Jason Cain and shooting guard J.R. Reynolds for the first two years.
Now, as he looks around the gym, he sees plenty of talent, but just as many question marks heading into the 2009 season.
“I kind of feel like this is a almost a first-year venture because when I got here, being blessed with Jason and J.R. and Sean was probably more than I could have expected,” Leitao said as practice began.
In their absence, questions abound such as who will want to take the big shot? Who will call out teammates for careless mistakes? Will the Cavaliers ever start actually playing the kind of defense Leitao demands?
Such unanswered questions, Leitao said, explains why “there’s both optimism and pessimism in every coach’s office right about now.”
The media picked Virginia to finish 12th — that’s last — in 2009.
“That’s all the motivation we need,” said 6-foot-8 forward Mike Scott.
“No one believes in us, so we just come out and work hard each day.”
Virginia got a head start on finding some answers during a three-games-in-two-days August trip to Canada. Before heading out, the Cavaliers were allowed to hold 10 practices that helped the team get used to not having Singletary around and come together.
This week, Leitao announced that his only seniors, guard Mamadi Diane and center Tunji Soroye, and junior guard Calvin Baker will be the captains.
It’s a role all three have been preparing for since last year.
“We do have a lot of young, good players, and the transition from high school to college is tough, so I make sure I talk to them as much as I can, trying to get them to stay positive,” said Baker, a transfer from William & Mary who was placed on scholarship after a solid 2008 season.
“As a freshman, you’re going to have a lot of ups and downs. I just want to make sure their downs don’t stay as long and their highs do.”
For Diane, whose career has been marked by sterling performances often followed by nearly invisible ones, the leading role could lift his game.
“Consistency, that was one of the things,” he said in recalling summertime coversations he had with Leitao. “But the main thing we talked about was leadership more than anything and bringing that every day. If you do that, the rest will take care of itself.”
The Cavaliers hope it will. Diane led Virginia in scoring six times last season, but his average of 11.8 points reflects his inconsistency.
Baker and redshirt freshman Sammy Zeglinski will start out sharing the point guard role, but if they struggle, Leitao may have to give some of those duties to freshman Sylven Landesburg, a 6-6 McDonald’s All-American.
The coach was hoping not to burden Landesburg too soon, and to let him work his way in at shooting guard with Diane and sophomore Jeff Jones.
Up front, Soroye returns after missing all of last season with knee and back issues and figures to give the Cavaliers an inside presence.
“Last year, players would get down the middle of the lane and we didn’t have a shot blocker down there that could touch their shot,” Baker said. “With Tunji down there, he’s real aggressive, he’s strong, he’s experienced. His presence on the court will help us a lot.”
The 6-11 Soroye also will serve as a mentor of sorts for freshman Assane Sene and John Brandenburg. Sene is 7 feet tall, Brandenburg 6-11.
The front court also will include Scott, a strong rebounder and inside player, streaky shooting Jamil Tucker and Jerome Meyinsse.
Leitao sees it as a roster chock full of talent, but needing live action to see who falls where and how roles work out moving ahead.
The players agree, but also think they have surprises in store.
“Naturally, when someone picks you to be last, you want to prove them wrong. That’s the chip that we have on our shoulder,” Baker said.
“We are out to prove a lot of people wrong.”
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