Young, West Virginia cap sprint through NIT field

NEW YORK -- Officially, the cameras and chroniclers will have the snippet of history correct: West Virginia senior center Robert Summers was the last to cut down a strand from the Mountaineers NIT championship net in Madison Square Garden. It must be noted, however, that fellow senior Frank Young made his job easier by scorching the those nets with six three-pointers earlier in the evening.

"That's just what Frank does," Summers said in the West Virginia locker room after the Mountaineers' 78-73 win over Clemson. "He's a spark to us, and when he just gets it and shoots, he's tough to get down."

Continuing a March run that began with his sharp shooting in two Big East tournament games and remained strong through the Mountaineers' run to their first NIT title since 1942, Young added another 24 points in the final. He was named MVP and helped the Mountaineers complete their March makeover from NCAA reject to NIT champion.

"Of course we wanted to be in the NCAA tournament, but to win this tournament, all of the joy is still there, the emotion is all the same," said Young, who shot 65.5 percent from the field in the five-game NIT run. "I'm happy we won, but it's sad because you know your career is over."

No stranger to the third month of the year and the madness that came with his team's runs to the Elite Eight and Sweet 16 the last two years, Young was the sole returning starter to Morgantown when practices began last fall. There were the outsized shoes to fill of Mike Gansey and Kevin Pittsnogle, leaving Young and the young'uns to develop into a team that sprinted and shot their way through the NIT field. The Mountaineers transformed the Garden of envy, where teams never want to be in March, into a Garden party consisting mainly of Mountaineer faithful, including Gov. Joe Manchin.

"We've been through years before where we have gone farther in the NCAA tournament, but there are only a few teams that get to make a run in March and our guys got to do that," said West Virginia coach John Beilein.

While it was the threes that put the Mountaineers over the top, it was their inspired play that set up the long-range daggers that curtailed any comebacks the Tigers attempted to mount.

"That's West Virginia's game," Clemson coach Oliver Purnell said. "They actually took more three-point shots than twos during the regular season. We knew that and we had a game plan to take that away and we didn't do it."

The Mountaineers that were supposed to undergo a rebuilding season this year were left to cut the nets, but as freshman Da'Sean Butler climbed the steps with a pair of scissors in his right hand, the sparkplug swing man with 20 points of his own did not know what to do.

"That became an issue," Beilein said. "Not that I have a lot of experience in [cutting down nets], but we were taking awfully big swipes out of that baby, and I don't blame them at all."