West Virginia

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In another thriller Villanova loses to West Virginia 39-36. What is going on with this program?

 

[needatobaby]

We are probably no. 1 in the country for least points allowed and next to last in scoring. Always did give W. Va. a tough time at home. Wasn't there but am surprised W. Va. did not soundly put us away in the second half. Poor tpenter is probably in shell shock from watching his second CYO game in a week. Most coaches do not like to play us. N.D. McGraw can barely speak after playing us. St. John's is going to run us out the door! 2 local seniors have signed letters to go to Depaul. I think that says it!!

 

[tpenter]

It was a tough loss, a game they should have won. The defense was outstanding the whole game. WVA shot poorly but most of that could be attributed to the Nova defense allowing no penetration, cutting off passing lanes, making WVA work for almost everything they got.

At the other end of the court it was more of the same. The first four games this year it looked like we had a good shooting team. Since then we couldn't hit the side of a barn if it was falling down on us. I think we scored two points in the last ten minutes of the first half. The 12 points in the first half plus the 30 points we scored against Fairfield gave us a whopping 42 points scored in the past 60 minues of game time. With three balls and foul shots taken into consideration, there haven't been a whole lot of field goals going through the hoop lately.

Bottom line on the game - the defense gave us more than enough chances to witn the game, the offense didn't deliver. We actually had a little spark near the end of the second half and a Kimmell three put us up by one with about three minutes to go. Sweeney then had a great block on Repella as she drove for a layup. An ISO at the other end got Kane a good look at a 12 foot banker that missed. The real ugliness then set in; a decent defensive set but Amanda fouled one one of the WVA big girls, putting her on the line for a one and one. This girl had bricked four straight foul shots, but nonetheless we didn't box out, Repella came in and got the rebound uncontested right under the basket and with a fresh 30 worked a play that got her the winning basket at the 1:30 mark.

It gets worse. Kimmell misses a makeable three and after another good defensive stand and a rebound of a miss we go at it again with about 45 seconds left. A timeout generated nothing on the inbound, the ball gets knocked away towards midcourt and Sweeney tracks it down only to knock it out of bounds. One of the few defensive breakdowns then allowed a layup at the 20 second mark to make it a three point game. Nova pushed the ball up the court, Kimmell spun off between two defenders to throw up a long three pointer with 12 seconds left just as Harry calls a timeout. Needless to say the shot went in, the refs gave Harry the time out and there we were in that familiar spot of inbounding the ball from the sideline with about 10 seconds left, down three. A desparate three heave from Kimmell missed badly but the WVA rebounder dropped it out of bounds so we had an inbound under the basket with 5 seconds left. Not much happened on the inbound, Kane winding up with the ball inside the three line, dribbling out and firing up a turnaround shot that had no chance. WVA and Coach Carey were thanking just about everyone to escape with a win out of that game.

Announced attendence of about 450 must have included at least 200 WVA fans. This was WVA's first ever win at the Pavillion, 0-12 previously. Brief game story, box score and a handful of photos on the Nova website.

The unGodly women's War on Sunday at St. Joe's. It might be interesting to see the new Fieldhouse.

Bah, Humbug!