WVU does well in brackets
by Jack Bogaczyk, Sports Editor , Charleston Daily Mail
And then the 2001-02 season went from "The Pit" to the pits.
No one in these parts has to be told about WVU's recent postseason tournament proficiency, however.
In the last five years under John Beilein and Bob Huggins, the Mountaineers are 20-9 in bracketed play in March, including 14-4 in the NCAA Tournament and NIT (with a title in the latter in 2007).
WVU began its Las Vegas Invitational bid Thursday night at the Coliseum - sort of - with an 86-54 rout of Longwood. The event is one of those November "exempt" events that have become popular because marquee conference teams get home games, and the NCAA allows three or four dates to count only as one.
It wasn't that WVU played well - anything but, really, in the kind of game that won't nearly get it done in the Big East (which, by the way, is off to a 28-3 start this season).
Huggins was less than enthralled with his starters, including Ruoff, the team's lone senior. Huggs played his bench for 105 of the foul- and turnover-slowed 200 minutes that seemed like an eternity.
The Lancers were pounded, but in this Vegas, no one is a loser. Everyone in the eight-team field advances to Nevada next weekend, in high major and low major brackets.
WVU (2-0) plays
Longwood (2-2) goes into a bracket with
All of that said, the bottom line for Ruoff is that he's accomplished a lot in a WVU uniform. His start Thursday was his 75th in a row, and the 6-foot-6 shooting guard needs only 66 points to become WVU's 45th 1,000-point scorer.
He's been to a pair on NCAA Sweet Sixteens and won an NIT title - but he hasn't done what Huggins regularly did during his earlier coaching years at Cincinnati, and win a trophy before Christmas, too.
"I'm not really sure why we've done well in tournaments," Ruoff said after a game in which he was frustrated by his lack of production. "Maybe the type of players we've had, the type of players, the character, our work ethic.
"We practice really hard. We practice harder than anybody in the country, I think. When it comes to the postseason, in March, teams legs start giving out. Ours don't."
Huggins and Beilein are very different coaches. While Huggins' three-hour practices can be physically grueling, Beilein's were more of a mental test. Both have gotten what they wanted from the Mountaineers - success.
"Huggs keeps saying, 'We're in it to win it,'" Ruoff said of the two nights in Vegas. "Second place is a nothing for us ... Anything less than a championship is kind of worthless for us. That's the attitude we take into it."
Among Huggins' 618 career victories, the WVU alumnus has 22 tournament titles (at Walsh, Akron and UC). Half of those were conference tournament crowns (Mid-Ohio, Ohio Valley , Great Midwest, Conference USA ).
He's won early as well as late, too - with titles in Las Vegas, Puerto Rico, the Great Alaska Shootout and homespun titles in the Zip Classic and Bearcat Classic.
Is there a secret to that success?
"I think, honestly, we have an advantage because we practice so hard every day," Huggins said.
"So, playing a Friday, Saturday, I don't know that we're as heavy-legged as maybe some other people.
"We have had great success in in-season tournaments where you're playing back-to-back, and I think that's because we practice so hard. Other people who maybe don't go as long and as hard, I think the fatigue factor kind of sets in.
"We won one a couple of years ago (at Cincinnati) and in the championship game we went out, and the stuff we do takes a lot of energy from us defensively, but it also takes a lot of energy from the people trying to run stuff against us because they have to work so hard to get the ball."
So, maybe what the Mountaineers do in Vegas, won't stay in Vegas. Maybe they bring back a trophy for that basketball practice facility-in-waiting next to the WVU Coliseum.
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