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Mountaineer maladies

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Posted: Thursday January 13, 2000 05:56 PM

By Ron Chimelis, Special to CNNSI.com

It wasn't as if West Virginia didn't already have problems, but the Mountaineers found more last week. Already faced with playing its entire season away from the WVU Coliseum -- which has been shut down for asbestos problems -- West Virginia found itself facing Syracuse without starting point guard Tim Lyles.

The 76-63 loss to Syracuse might have happened anyway, given that the Orangemen are the nation's last Division I unbeaten team, but the suspension of Lyles was another distraction for a team whose gypsy lifestyle of home games at three stopgap locations makes concentration hard enough.

"At this point, he's not even in my thoughts for the future," West Virginia coach Gale Catlett said after he suspended Lyles for arguing with the coaching staff at halftime of a Jan. 8 loss to St. John's. "The rules are no different than they've been for the last 22 years I've been coaching."

That left Jason D'Alesio, a 6-1 senior who played in only nine games and scored just five points last year, to shoulder Lyles' responsibilities against Syracuse. D'Alessio scored three points and combined with freshman Lionel Armstead for 5-for-22 shooting for West Virginia (7-6, 0-3 Big East), which missed 15 of 18 three-point shots and offered guard play that even Catlett admitted "left a lot to be desired."

But D'Alesio received support from an interesting source: Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, who said West Virginia may be better off this way.

"The point guard we saw [Lyles] was throwing it away and running all over the place and throwing up horrible shots," Boeheim said. "They didn't do any of that against us. I was more nervous about playing them with this team than with that guy. They played organized and got the ball to the right people."

Lyles was averaging nine points, and without him, West Virginia will have to consider a more conservative game plan. But his freshman season has been one of tumult, including an earlier one-game suspension for missing a study hall.

His indefinite suspension last week was the latest of several internal problems for the Mountaineers, and by far the most serious. Sophomore forward Chris Moss and freshman guard Kent Dennis were each suspended for a game for an unspecified violation of team rules, and center John Oliver and forward Marcus Goree were lifted from the starting lineup against St. John's for missing curfew.

Goree is the star of the team, and Catlett called the 6-8 senior "a great young man who just missed curfew." By Wednesday's Syracuse game, the only disciplinary problem that still affected the lineup was Lyles. Goree had 17 points against Syracuse, and 6-9 junior center Calvin Bowman, a junior-college transfer, scored a career-high 21 points on 10-for-16 shooting.

Whether West Virginia can survive 19-turnover games like Wednesday's is a fair question. What does seem clear, though, is that Catlett is serious about keeping the team's internal circumstances under control, which has been almost as hard at times as never playing a game on his team's true home court.

UConn's answer

Voskuhl and Wane combined for 12 points, 18 rebounds and four blocked shots in a 77-67 win over Texas, which couldn't fully exploit All-America center candidate Chris Mihm in the middle. Voskuhl played 24 minutes and Wane 16, and each 6-11 center had help from their teammates.

The 7-foot Mihm scored 18 points, but UConn kept him off balance with double-teaming that involved a bit of timing and deception.

"They played a little 1-on-1, and then they'd double from the backside and I couldn't see the other guy coming," Mihm said. "By the time I'd get into my shot, he'd be right there." UConn held Texas to 33.3-percent shooting and received a heartening performance from guard Albert Mouring, whose 21 points came on 5-for-6 shooting from 3-point range. The game seemed to prove that Khalid El-Amin, who scored 14 points and remains UConn's most dangerous offensive threat, does not have to shoulder the biggest scoring burden all the time for the Huskies to win big games.

Orange fever

The Orangemen are at South Carolina Thursday, revisiting a team they embarrassed 84-37 last year. It caps a three-game road trip that opened with the Syracuse defense holding Miami to a season-low 31 percent shooting and was followed by the workmanlike, if unspectacular, win at West Virginia.

But the real test of Syracuse's credentials as a top 10 team, perhaps even a national championship contender, may come at home Sunday against Notre Dame. For the 11-5 Irish, it's another chance to prove what many feel they've already proven, which is that any short list of Big East upper-echelon teams must include a Notre Dame club that has won at Ohio State and UConn, and come close to knocking off several other top programs.

For Syracuse, it's a chance to inch closer to the best start in school history, a 15-0 mark in 1986-87. That team lost the national championship game to Indiana when Keith Smart hit a last-second jumper.

Syracuse hasn't needed any last-second heroics, and while the Orangemen couldn't be blamed for getting a bit impatient over the issue of full respect, Boeheim continues to low-key his club's performance.

"What people don't know is that we've been in one-point games six times this year in the second half," he said after the West Virginia game. "We had four offensive fouls in this game that we don't normally do. We did some uncharacteristic things that almost bit us.'' How good is Syracuse? The Orangemen have a dominant inside presence in Etan Thomas, who not only offers intimidating defensive presence but has scored in double figures five straight games. In fact, Syracuse may be relying on Thomas a bit too much, for the offense slumped against West Virginia when he ran into foul trouble. But in addition to the 6-9 Thomas and 6-8 Ryan Blackwell down low, and Jason Hart running the offense, the Orangemen are getting solid play from 6-4 sophomore Tony Bland. Admittedly benefiting because opposing defenses have to worry about several of his teammates, Bland proved his value with a career-high 22 points against West Virginia, including nine in the final five minutes.

"He's been getting about 22-24 minutes and [6-3 freshman] DeShaun Williams has been getting about 16," Boeheim said before the West Virginia game. The Syracuse coach thinks Bland and 6-6 guard Preston Shumpert are probably the Orangemen's most improved players since last season – a reminder, he says, of how much development can be gained by players from their freshman to sophomore seasons.

The improvement has made Syracuse a deeper team, especially in the backcourt. The question of whether the Orangemen truly deserve to be included with the other presumed national title contenders (Cincinnati, Arizona, UConn, Stanford, Auburn, perhaps Duke) remains. But it is getting harder and harder to find reasons why they shouldn't be included in the mix.

Finally, a break

Billet has been averaging 35 minutes per game at the point for Rutgers, but received backup help Wednesday when Brown gave 15 solid minutes in a 71-61 win over Providence. He took only one shot, a successful 3-pointer, but hit 7 of 8 free throws and energized not only the Scarlet Knights, but the man he replaced.

"He does bring energy defensively, and if he can run the offense, that will be great," said Billet, admittedly daunted by the prospect of playing almost all the time. Brown had played just 26 minutes before the Providence game, and while his defensive effort has not been in question, his offensive skills survived their first prolonged test.

Brown is a 6-1 junior who played for Mott Community College in Flint, Mich., last year. His modest JUCO numbers (8.0 ppg., 3.1 apg.) suggest a player who will never produce enough points to start, but may be able to provide adequate backup help.

"He has a lot of heart and toughness because he really started out poorly when he got here," Rutgers coach Kevin Bannon said. Brown was on the floor when Rutgers began pulling away from a 50-50 tie, and gave the first indication that Bannon's addition of him as a late recruit –- almost an emergency pickup in case anything happened to Billet -- may yet yield dividends.

Score one for Troy

But the Boston College freshman may not be that far away. Bell had 24 points but missed 11 of 16 shots as BC had problems with Notre Dame's zone. The Irish have shifted to more and more zone as the season has progressed, and the victories have been piling up as a result.

Murphy, a 6-9, 225-pound junior, remains an opponent's matchup nightmare. He's strong enough to post up a smaller defender, and agile enough to take a big man outside. He had 27 points on 9-for-13 shooting in Notre Dame's 86-77 win over BC, lifting the Irish to 11-5 -- and 2-0 in the Big East for the first time since ND joined the league in 1995.

The 6-1 Bell doesn't have that flexibility, and neither does BC. The Notre Dame zone forced the Eagles, who have sought more scoring from their forwards, to take 26 three-pointers, and they missed 18. With Bell and Howard University transfer Xavier Singletary as first-year backcourt players, BC is a far better team than last year, but the Eagles are still learning to improve their shot selection, especially against zones – though they did have some good looks against Notre Dame that just didn't fall.

Ron Chimelis covers college basketball for the Springfield (Mass.) Union-News. Check back each Thursday for his latest CNNSI.com Big East Insider.

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