Spreading the Wealth to Beat Rutgers

Rather than Da'Sean Butler or Alex Ruoff doing all the scoring this time, West Virginia had to rely on some unfamiliar faces to get some points. The game started off with West Virginia scoring like they were playing the Washington Generals. The Mountaineers jumped out to a 21-4 early lead. But when Rutgers switched to an odd three man-two zone defense, WVU went cold.

Some point in the second half folks like Dee Proby, Wellington Smith, and Kevin Jones found a soft spot in the Knights defense and started knocking down jumpers.

Rutgers got close a couple times but never took the lead back. The final ended up being 74-56 after the last two minutes of fouling by Rutgers and free throws by West Virginia. You hear coaches talk all the time about every game being "big." Most of the time, I throw that out the window as coach speak. But today and the rest of the regular season every game is going to be big for this team as they position themselves for a high seed in the Big East tournament. As well as a high seed in the NCAA tournament.

Next up is a trip to Cincinnati and a big night for Huggins. I don't want to take anything away from that, but I'm still going to work on the "punch Mick Cronin in the face" t-shirt.

Photo from BGN