NEW YORK -- Da'Sean Butler took an inbounds pass and banked in a 3-pointer from the head of the key at the buzzer to give West Virginia (No. 6 ESPN/USA Today, No. 7 AP) a 54-51 victory over Cincinnati on Thursday night in the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament.
Three No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament are seemingly be all but wrapped up by Kansas, Syracuse and Kentucky. Is WVU worthy of the fourth No. 1 spot? ESPN's Doug Gottlieb believes so. Click below to watch the video ...
It’s tournament time in March. The theme: win or go home. Thursday night, West Virginia will debut in the 2010 Big East Tournament, held in New York’s world famous Madison Square Garden. The good news for the Mountaineers is they are playing their best basketball of the season heading into tournament play and should be primed for deep runs in the Big East and NCAA tournaments.
While the West Virginia women’s basketball team is enjoying its best year in program history, the Mountaineers are well aware it’s March and that means the most important part of the season looms just ahead in both the Big East and NCAA tournaments.
Seventh-ranked WVU (26-4, 13-3 BIG EAST) has reached its highest win total and ranking in school history. The Mountaineers finished second in the Big East behind perennial superpower and top-ranked Connecticut.
“Our goal was to win the conference, but we finished second,” said head coach Mike Carey. “In a lot of conferences throughout the country, that would be like finishing first. I think Connecticut would finish first in any conference in the country.”
Da’Sean Butler told himself he was not going to cry prior to the team’s final home game of the season Monday night against Georgetown. Butler, a senior forward who has scored 1,936 career points, third on the school’s all-time scoring list, fought off the tears after being introduced for the final time inside the WVU Coliseum. But when he checked out of the game with 30 seconds to go and the 81-68 win in the bag, it was a different story.
“I’m not going to lie, I started crying,” Butler said with a shaky voice as his eyes watered and reddened shortly after the game. “When I got subbed out, I realized it’s my last time being in here. I just started just thinking back to everything -- everything just kind of hit me. I won’t be here anymore in this gym playing. I’m just going to miss everything.”
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