West Virginia fans do not like Patrick Ewing Jr. Last year’s small scuffle with then-coach John Beilein earned the senior forward the chagrin of the Mountaineer Maniacs, but his game-ending, heartbreaking block on Saturday night placed the crown prince of Georgetown basketball somewhere between Satan and former football coach Rich Rodriguez in the current Morgantown lexicon of hatred.
The raucous sellout crowd in the West Virginia Coliseum made it clear that they believed the block was a goaltending violation.
“I’m not allowed to say,” a scowling West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins said of the final play. “You can look for yourself, but it seemed pretty obvious.”
“I just reacted,” Ewing said. “You leave the decision to the referees. The referee said it wasn’t goaltending, so it wasn’t goaltending.”
Regardless, the Hoyas (16-2, 6-1 BE) escaped Morgantown with yet another down-to-the-wire conference win, 58-57.
Georgetown has made a habit of winning games in the second half, and Saturday night was no different. The Mountaineers (15-5, 4-3 BE) erased a one point halftime deficit immediately with a three-point bomb from senior center Jamie Smalligan (6 pts). West Virginia leads the conference in made three-pointers, and their vaunted outside shooting heated up in the second half. Two more three-pointers from senior guard Darris Nichols (16 pts) and junior guard Alex Ruoff (13 pts) sparked a 13-2 second half run and gave West Virginia the biggest lead of the game at 37-27.
Rather than panic and force outside shots, the veteran Hoyas trusted their offensive sets to cut into the lead.
“Offensively we were more patient,” head coach John Thompson III said after the game. “We didn’t always look for the initial scoring opportunities; we looked for the one, two, three cuts.”
The Mountaineers played almost exclusively man-to-man defense, something that few Georgetown opponents have done this year. The new defensive look brought back an old friend for the Hoya offense: the backdoor cut. In a stretch midway through the second half, Georgetown connected on four backdoor cuts, the last of which was an emphatic slam by freshman guard Austin Freeman (8 pts) on a feed from Ewing that cut the lead to 41-38.
At the defensive end, the Hoyas came out in their own aggressive man-to-man defense and forced a shot-clock violation, leading to a three-point play by junior guard Jessie Sapp (15 pts) which tied the game at 41.
But each time that Georgetown looked poised to retake the lead, Nichols or Ruoff would come up with a big basket to give the Mountaineers breathing room.
Each team had its Achilles heel in the game. For the Hoyas, it was turnovers. The Mountaineers lead the conference in turnover margin and outscored Georgetown 19-7 off of turnovers. For West Virginia, it was free-throw shooting—an unexpected flaw that proved fatal
“We were 12-23 [from the foul-line],” Huggins said. “We are supposed to be a good shooting team.”
West Virginia called a timeout with 50 seconds left to play after a pretty lob and score from Ruoff to Nichols to give the Mountaineers a 56-53 lead. Georgetown looked to penetrate after the timeout, and did so with a slashing drive from Sapp who was fouled and converted both free-throws. Thompson continued his trend of offensive and defensive substitutions in close games, putting Ewing and sophomore guard Jeremiah Rivers into the game for defensive possessions. Rivers’ tight defense put Nichols on the foul line, but the guard could only sink one free throw, giving West Virginia a two point lead with 30 seconds left.
“Nichols misses that free-throw and it becomes a two point lead,” Huggins says. “That changes the way we defend the final play. Now we have to defend the penetration.”
With the clock winding down, the ball once again found its way into Sapp’s hands. The junior’s cross-over dribble gave him a step on Ruoff, who wanted to keep Sapp out of the lane—it was just enough to sink the clutch go-ahead three-pointer with six seconds to play.
“That’s who he is,” Thompson said of Sapp. “He has confidence in himself and he has the confidence of his teammates.”
After the final inbound, Nichols streaked down the court, closely pursued by Rivers, but a crushing screen by Smalligan at midcourt opened up a passing lane. The guard dished to sophomore forward Da’Sean Butler (12 pts) on the baseline. Butler put up a floater just outside of the paint, but Ewing, who had endured the wrath of the Mountaineer faithful every time he touched the ball, deposited the shot two rows deep to end the game.
The Hoyas shot 46.7 percent from the field, and 23.5 percent from behind the arc, while the Mountaineers were 39 percent from the floor and 42.9 percent from behind the arc. Georgetown out-rebounded West Virginia 32 to 26, and senior center Roy Hibbert had a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds to go along with four blocks.
Sophomore forward DaJuan Summers limped off the court with an apparent ankle/foot injury and into the locker room with just over two minutes to play in the game. By the post-game press conference, Thompson had not heard any news of Summers’ condition, saying only that it looked bad initially and that he was icing his ankle.
