We here at wvmountaineersports.com would like to congratulate Joe Alexander on making the All Big East first team. Alexander’s 93 point barrage in the final three regular season games was just enough for the voters to catch up what we already know. For the season Alexander averaged 16.2 points per game to go along with 6 rebounds not to mention 46 blocks for the season. He also shot almost 48 percent from the field while shooting 81 percent from the foul line.

Joe has come a long way since he got relegated to the bench during WVU’s classic NIT title run. Thanks to Coach Huggs Mountaineer Nation will see something that hasn’t been seen in the past soon-to-be 29 years…..an NBA player that hails from West Virginia. Not only is Alexander a leading candidate for next season’s Big East Player of the Year but also, dare I say, one of the top candidates for the John Wooden Award. Once again, congrats to Alexander and let the hype machine for his senior season begin.

Also, our two favorite seniors, Darris Nichols and Ted Talkington, found out Tuesday that they have received Big East Conference Awards.

Darris Nichols will share the Big East Scholarship Award with our much hated Pitt foe Ronald Ramon.

Ted Talkington was named 2007-08 Big East/Aeropostale Men’s Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year. He will recieve a $2,000 scholarship that can be used for graduate studies or professional studies… in other words, he can blow it in Vegas!

West Virginia from the very start forgot how to play good basketball as the 7th seeded Louisville Cardinals jumped out to a 20-3 lead and never look back as they upset 3rd seeded and 18th ranked WVU Mountaineers by the score of 67-60.  After the Cards had a 20 point halftime lead and where up as much as 22 the Eers tried all second half to mount a comeback.  But fouls and the Cards offensive rebounding (16 in all) prevented the Eers from accomplishing that task as they could get no closer to five.  Senior LaQuita Owens lead the Eers with 23 points while Louisville star Angel McCoughtry scored 24 points.  The Cards will have the dubious task to upset top-seed UCONN in the Big East Tournament final tomorrow night while the Mountaineers will eagerly await to find out who they’ll play in the NCAA Tournament on Selection Sunday.

Before the WVU men play their 1st round game Wednesday afternoon against Providence let’s not forget that the women are involved in a potential Big East Tournament run of their own.  After last night’s crusin’ over South Florida they now advance to play the Louisville Cardinals who upset the 2nd seeded Rutgers Scarlet Knights last night.  The tipoff is roughly at 8:30 and will be televised on ESPNU (which sucks for you in Motown unless you want to go to Damon’s or Kegler’s to watch it).  The winner of this game will play in the Big East Tournament Final tomorrow night to likely face the 1st seeded floor host UCONN Huskies.  Should be a great game to watch.  GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MOUNTAINEERS!

I hate the show but this is a good one and it’s a public relations dream for WVU. This episode is for the Turner Family in Fairmont, WV. They had a 600sq. ft. house that held 5 kids and 2 adults. Trust me, they needed a new house. I missed the first few minutes, but I think the dad is a football coach for a local school (high school??). Also, I don’t know what position their son Desmond Turner plays, but for a 16 year old he looks big and has 2 more years to get bigger and is dying to go to WVU, Doc, get on the phone and keep ‘em in WV baby!

The bad thing about this is Ty Penington was at the Pitt/WVU disaster and they were showing some clips of Ty talking at the game. I was there and I don’t remember this, but then again, I don’t remember much from that game. Anyway, if you get to see this show, it will give you a good fuzzy feeling cause they are helping out a deserving WV family and it is chuck full of WVU lovin! I’m so jealous of the 16 year old’s bedroom.. all decked out in Gold and Blue!!!

UPDATE: Let’s make the prizes even sweeter. I would like to be able to make the First Place, Runner-Up prizes better and I would like to have enough prizes for a Third Place and a Dead Last Sucker prize. So I was thinking, if you own a business, have something you have two of, or know someone who would donate a prize for this contest please get in touch with me. I would be willing to work out a deal with any businesses, restaurant, bar, shop.. anyone who has something a WV fan would be interested in. A donation to the prize pool gets you free ad space, the better the gift, the better the ad space.  Let’s make this big people! Contact me at mountaineerbob@gmail.com

It’s that time of the year…finally. The NCAA Tournament is just around the corner and we here at WVMountaineerSports.com want to give back to our loyal readers and resident know-it-alls.

Unlike most “free” online brackets out there, with ours you can actually win something… legally. We are psyched to be able to pay you guys and gals back for being such loyal readers and making WVMountaineerSports.com the #1 WVU fan site out there!

So here’s the deal. I’ve set up a bracket group over at Yahoo! Fantasy Sports. Signing up is free. Since we are giving away prizes we have decided to make the group password protected to make sure only fans of the site and WVU join and play. The password is ‘pittsucks‘. Everything else is pretty self explanatory. Enjoy and have fun.

Check this kid out: Future WVU Coach

Knowing that St. John was not going to go to the Big East Tournament next week not to mention they were playing in front of a sparse crowd at the world’s most famous arena you would think the West Virginia Mountaineers would stomp them all day. When WVU was up 23-12 with about 10 minutes left you’d think they could but leave it to the Johnnies to play with pride which is important in the playgrounds of NYC. It was that pride, led by coach Norm Roberts, that almost gave St. John’s an upset win and potentially spoiling WVU’s NCAA hopes which appeared locked after Monday’s win over Pittsburgh.

Enter Joe Mazzulla. Playing for most of the second half in place of the injured Darris Nichols he was outplayed defensively leading the Johnnies to make some important buckets near the end of the game. It was Mazz who fouled Malik Boothe with 5.5 seconds left with the score tied at 66. Boothe calmly drained both and with a St. John’s timeout someone to take charge. It was Mazzulla who dribbled through the full court press (even dribbling off his knee to cut through a double-team) to score a lay-up with .3 seconds left to tie the game at 68 and send the game to Overtime. Read the rest »

Saturday, West Virginia (21-9, 10-7) heads to the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden, for its final regular season game against St. John’s (11-18, 5-12).

The Mountaineers have found a home away from home in New York City in recent years, especially in March.

Rewind back to the 2004-2005 season under former head coach John Beilein. WVU defeated Providence, then-No. 19 Boston College and then-No. 13 Villanova, in Madison Square Garden, before falling to Syracuse, in the Big East Tournament championship game.

The Mountaineers performance in the conference tournament helped them secure a NCAA Tournament bid. Kevin Pittsnogle, Mike Gansey and company shocked the college basketball world and took WVU all the way to the Elite Eight. WVU came up just short against Louisville, in a thrilling overtime loss that would have sent the Mountaineers to the Final Four.

Fast forward to 2006-2007. WVU advanced to the semifinals of the NIT, again in Madison Square Garden. Darris Nichols hit a game-winning, buzzer-beating 3-point basket from the corner against Mississippi State.

The 63-62 victory over MSU propelled WVU to the NIT championship game against Clemson. Frank Young lead all scorers with 24 points in his final game in a West Virginia uniform. WVU claimed its first NIT championship since 1942.

Playing in ‘The Big Apple’ has proven kind to the Mountaineers of late. Tournament games in the Garden have launched WVU’s premier postseason play and exhibited a prestigious basketball program’s history, in a football-first state.

Those Mountaineer moments and players will live in the hearts of WVU fans forever. Read the rest »

The coaches of West Virginia’s football program held a media luncheon to get everyone familiarized with each other on Wednesday. After reading up on the luncheon and some of the things talked about, I found what Jeff Mullen and Doc Holiiday discussed during the luncheon interesting. What I would like to do is give you a breakdown on what they had to say, along with the Q & A done with Jeff Casteel.

Jeff Mullen:

The offense will be running the option in addition to the shotgun attack. They want to make sure the defenses they play have to plan on the run, keep, and pitch with running the ball. In addition to that, they want to give the players a chance when running or throwing the ball if they have a defense facing them especially fully in the box to be able to stretch the field.

He mentions that the offensive line is the heart and soul of the offense, and that everything will begin with the line.

He believes it all boils down to the players. He says that it starts with getting good recruits and coaching them hard with the fundamental areas and demanding it from the players. The coaches will give them the schemes and the oppurtunity to win, but they will never sacrifice the players abilities with really smart ideas from the staff room.

Doc Holliday:

He breaks down briefly the areas of recruiting they have set. In addition to drumming the high schools across West Virginia for players and doing what they can to keep them in state, they will be hitting Atlanta, GA hard in their recruiting travels.

He believes recruiting in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia are important areas of emphasis for the staff. They will be hitting those states hard as well which will have them working very hard to get kids to join the Mountaineers.

He states that they have some concerns in the tailback area with depth, mentioning the signing of Zach Hulce, as well as concerns with their slots and H receivers.

He mentions they are still pursuing a couple of prospects for this year’s recruiting class.

Jeff Casteel:

He gives a brief couple moments of preview of the defense. He says how excited they are this spring and mentions the turnover in staff for the first time in 5 or 6 years. He touches on the addtions of Steve Dunlap and Dave Lockwood and the process of meshing their ideas with what they have always done defensively the last 5 or 6 years.

He spoke of losing players on defense and that they were down to 5 or 6 scholarship players going into spring practice, and that they had signed on 5 or 6 more to add back to the losses of seniors and early draftees. It will be a big challenge this spring, but with the fact there are new coaches in place it’s a pretty good situation. The recruits will start fresh with unbiased opinions of the new coaches as well as the newer version of WVU’s defense.

He feels they have alot of players to fill spots for this years team, but until spring practice is full on then they can find the spots for the players that fit them best. He mentions that Zac Cooper is moving to the defensive line for the 2008 season, and that they don’t expect many changes in postion other than the obvious ones needing filled.

On Reed Williams: “He will not be in spring practice. We’re holding him out due to some shoulder issues that he is healing up from.”

The only thing I have to say about what is written above is: I don’t like the option run attack much because it gives the defense facing it a chance to cause fumbles if they get to the right spot at the right moment. It’s about timing. Facing a player who is skilled and seasoned on the field can very well cause the same problems that arise when you do reverses. The pro of it is that it does give us more of a chance to find a way to make positive yardage in gap assigments and in some blitz packages that will throw off the defense. But I’m pretty confident that come kickoff 2008, the staff will have the players ready and will be ready to run with the blue and gold for another chance at the Big East title.