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Monday night's heavyweight fight between two top 5 teams never quite felt like a 15-round slugfest, but that doesn't mean the Villanova Wildcats are in a mood to complain about the evening they spent in Morgantown, W. Va.

No, Coach Jay Wright and the rest of his Philadelphia friends won't mind the fact that West Virginia lacked a little extra juice in one of the Big East's most important games of the 2010 season. The visitors from Eastern Pennsylvania - fresh from a decisive loss at Georgetown on Saturday - were able to rebound in Appalachia and split a very demanding two-game series in the span of 60 hours. As a result, Villanova was able to gain crucial leverage in the chase for the Big East regular season championship.

Wildcats-Mountaineers was no small matter. With West Virginia having lost at home to Syracuse, Coach Bob Huggins couldn't afford to see his team drop another consequential contest at WVU Coliseum. The Wildcats, for their part, had to show themselves and their conference competitors that the 103-90 loss they absorbed against Georgetown was an aberration and not a sign of things to come. West Virginia needed this game in order to gain leverage in the Big East standings, while Villanova required a good result in order to buck up its slightly sagging confidence. At any rate, both teams had their reasons to grab the brass ring.

Only the Wildcats seemed to have the will and the want-to on Monday, as the Mountaineers endured a distinctly discouraging evening in front of their disappointed fans.

One of the major subtexts to this showdown is that West Virginia's fans were put on notice following WVU's most recent home game on Feb. 3 against Pittsburgh. At that game, a member of the Mountaineer fan base - presumably from the student section - threw a coin that hit Pittsburgh assistant coach Tom Herrion near his left ear. The situation became urgent enough for Huggins to take the public-address announcer's microphone and broadcast a brief message to the crowd. This incident came on the heels of previous unsavory episodes at West Virginia home games in which the student section used profanity in an attempt to unsettle Ohio State superstar Evan Turner, and a "Karen Sypher" chant for Louisville coach Rick Pitino. There was an extra security presence at this Villanova contest, and interestingly enough, that reality really did seem to subdue the West Virginia student section.

Even more strangely, that low-key vibe really did seem to take away from the Mountaineers' on-court energy.

Indeed, for a game of such magnitude, Huggins's hardwood heroes just didn't have a lot of jump in their legs or fire in the belly. Villanova's guards - particularly superstar Scottie Reynolds (21 points on 10-of-10 free throw shooting, with five assists and three steals) - were able to take control of this game at both ends of the floor. West Virginia had more length and size at both ends of the floor, but Villanova's guard-heavy lineup proved to be much quicker than the Mountaineers all game long. While WVU needed to play this game over the top and in the low post, Villanova needed to use its quickness to hound the Mountaineers at the defensive end of the floor, and dribble around them at the offensive end.

The boys in visiting blue jerseys clearly won on both counts.

Reynolds and the rest of the Wildcat backcourt were clearly able to use dribble penetration to eviscerate a lead-footed West Virginia defense. Bob Huggins is a defense-first coach, so the West Virginia boss couldn't have been pleased with the fact that his team allowed Villanova to hit 57 percent of its field goal attempts (29 of 51). In the final 12 minutes of regulation, both defenses broke down a lot and suffered repeated miscommunications, but since Villanova held a lead throughout the second half (and actually preserved a lead it maintained since the 14:45 mark of the first half), any defensive lapse was more costly for the home team. Both teams gambled a lot - and unnecessarily, one might add - by trying to steal entry passes into the low post, but since that kind of error affected each side to a relatively equal degree, it was West Virginia who suffered more.

The Mountaineers pulled within three points (64-61) with just over seven minutes remaining in the game, but then suffered a fatal field goal drought of roughly four minutes (from the 5:54 mark until the two-minute mark of regulation) at precisely the wrong time. Villanova - taking advantage of a comparatively tame WVU student section and the altered mood inside a normally intimidating arena - salted the game away at the free throw line and got a much-needed split in its grueling two-game road swing. The Mountaineers dropped to 8-3 in the league, a full two games behind the 10-1 tandem of Villanova and co-leader Syracuse.

West Virginia could have emerged as Syracuse's closest pursuer. Now, however, the run for the Big East title appears to be a two-team race.

Villanova won't mind at all.

 

By: Matt Zemek
BigEast-fans.com Staff Writer