Love WVU tenancity - hate their punk-ness

Play hard, rough, tenacious, whatever. I respect how hard WVU plays and especially how they hit the offensive boards.

But keep your mouth shut. The WVU guard (Jashean something) gets in guys faces and talks crap. How do refs let him get away with it?

He baited Selden into a T tonight, and gets away with the same crap all the time.

I'm pretty sure he trash talked Self after he hit the 3 at end of first half. Someone watch it again and confirm please.

He appeared to apologize to Self in handshake line afterward. Punk.

Hi AZ

I didn't see him say anything to Coach. He drained it right at the buzzer, turned and walked toward his bench. If he said anything I couldn't see it.....but I don't have a large screen.

I have the game recorded...early start means I'm still at work. It seems like a few board members always re watch and see things. Maybe they can see better than I can.

Thanks Wheaty.

I missed it for a second, and only saw Self turn around and appear to say something as the kid walked away. Self also looked pissed as he walked off. Then, in the handshake line, they said something to each other that looked more than "good game". Kinda like they laughed something off. I may just dislike the kid enough to see what's not there.

Didn't see the comment directed at our bench, and agree that the Selden T should have been a mutual warning. Nevertheless, I'm glad the guys stuck it right back at WVU.

Here's my take on WVU overall. While I'm not a fan of the ugly basketball, I don't mind seeing tenacity and full court presses. It's the general chippiness that gets old quickly. By all means, trap guys in the backcourt, get the steal and score...just act like you've been there before. The "swagger" crap in basketball is getting old EVERYWHERE. Drain a big 3? Go play defense, we don't need to see comments or gestures.

I will say that I do have a grudging appreciation of WVU in some ways. Despite his somewhat checkered past, Huggins has been successful, and his players seem to love and respect him despite the fact that he's a task master. He's got a guy that they NEED on indefinite suspension, so while I don't know if the guy merely skipped class or is an axe murderer, I respect a coach who's willing to be a disciplinarian.

Finally, I can't imagine that there's much going on in Morgantown in February, so I'm sure that the locals must love having something to get behind. Whether they're a rival or not, getting people fired up by college basketball, and particularly Big 12 basketball helps us. In the end, no matter whether we win #12 or not, we need a competitive conference, so having half the conference in the top 25 is certainly good for us.

In the late '80s and early '90s I went through a brief NBA phase and was a huge Detroit Pistons fan, and particularly liked Bill Laimbeer.

I'll give everyone a moment to get past that....

Anyway, what I loved about that team was that they actually played defense, which in the NBA was pretty much unheard of. They were also total bruisers (thugs? ok). Nevertheless at the time, it was fairly revolutionary.

Laimbeer, in particular, was amazing to watch. Here's a kid who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who certainly didn't need an NBA paycheck playing as mean and tough as any kid from any city street. I'm sure that his ethnicity and background riled some of his opponents. Adding to it his totally dirty style of play, simply splashed gasoline on the embers.

Two things happened with regularity:
1.) Opposing players would routinely come out less concerned with adhering to the game plan and would instead focus on "showing Laimbeer up". Inevitably they'd be taken out of their game and would fail miserably.
2.) Due to his constant work on the refs (whining, etc.) refs would actually think twice about calling fouls on him. If you go back and look at old game footage, you can actually see refs getting THIS CLOSE to blowing the whistle, hesitating, and letting the game continue.

So while I don't like Huggy-ball, I feel a little hypocritical knowing that at one point in my life I found a similar style of play to be completely entertaining and highly effective.

nm