West Virginia vs Villanova Basketball Recap

West Virginia 68, Villanova 66 (OT)

The West Virginia Mountaineers, by any reasonable measure, did not play their best basketball game of the 2010 season on Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia.

It didn't matter. The athletes from Appalachia are ticketed for a double-dose of deuces in their very near future.

A two-point win over Villanova at the Wachovia Center has coach Bob Huggins' club ticketed for the No. 2 seed in the upcoming Big East Tournament, and very likely a second seed in the NCAA Tournament as well. Don't ask anyone in dark road jerseys how the WVU crew pulled a win out of the hat in the City of Brotherly Love; the only thing that counts is that West Virginia got the job done.

Somehow.

If you had told Huggins, assistant coach Billy Hahn, or anyone else on the West Virginia coaching staff that their team would score just four points in the first 10 minutes of the game, they'd have hated their chances of winning. Mountaineer coaches would have offered a similar response if you had told them that their lineup would spend the final seven minutes and 33 seconds of the first half without hitting a single field goal attempt. Indeed, when WVU walked off the court at the intermission with a 29-16 deficit, few in Philly could have expected the men from Morgantown to rally well enough and long enough to overcome Coach Jay Wright's Wildcats.

Yet, that's precisely what happened in the second half. Throwing down big-league defense which frustrated and confused Villanova star Scottie Reynolds (a subpar 17 points on 5-of-15 shooting with four turnovers and only three assists), West Virginia held the Wildcats to just five points in the first eight-plus minutes of the second half.

Villanova earned overtime on a 3-pointer by guard Corey Fisher with only 10 seconds left in regulation, but the visitors had to feel very good about extending this showdown another five minutes. While it's true that WVU's Devin Ebanks endured a major brain cramp by hoisting a 40-foot shot at the very end of regulation when he could have and should have dribbled to the basket, the bigger picture still indicated that West Virginia was still standing after 40 minutes, a scenario that wasn't too likely at halftime.

In overtime, the Mountaineers acted the part of a team that had gained a second chance.

West Virginia continued to hound Reynolds in the extra period, allowing only one made field goal to the Cats, a tying 3-pointer by Corey stokes with 35 seconds left. Still in control of the game's flow, the Mountaineers took the lead with 5.7 seconds left on a banked-in runner by star forward Da'Sean Butler (who scored a game-high 21 points). When Reynolds capped his miserable day by missing an open three on Nova's final possession, the memory of that nightmarish first half, and an afternoon filled with bad shot selection and sluggish offense, melted away for everyone on the West Virginia bench. Multiple seeds had been planted in the Mountaineers' basketball garden.

To be more specific, "two" seeds had been planted for the victorious and mentally tough Mountaineers.

by Matt Zemek
BigEast-fans.com Correspondent