WV Fan Latest Posts
|
15 March 2010
MORGANTOWN - The margin for error in Big East basketball - or the sport in general, for that matter - is razor thin. A shot lips out or banks in, a tipped pass is caught or goes astray, a rebound bounces right to one team or left to the other.
Just one of those can make the difference between a win and a loss. No one understands those principles better than West Virginia. Or at least one would assume so.
Let's face it, the Mountaineers' entire 2010 season has been one series after another of those bounces. Somehow, some way, most of them have gone WVU's way.
We bring that up, of course, as a cautionary tale. With pundits right and left anointing West Virginia as a team poised on the brink of a run to the Final Four, one must first understand how this team is going to get there if, indeed, it happens.
They're going to do it by the skin of their teeth. Every game. And yes, that includes Friday's NCAA tournament opener against decided underdog Morgan State.
And everyone knows it.
"It's just the way we play,'' Da'Sean Butler said. "Who knows why?''
You don't want to say that the breaks have simply all gone West Virginia's way this season because that somehow diminishes what a talented, experienced and really hard-working group of players has done. It makes all of West Virginia's success sound like little but good luck.
To an extent that might be true, but what is it they say about luck? Something about being what happens when preparation meets opportunity, isn't it? This is a team that has been very well prepared and has, for the most part, been the beneficiary of what is supposed to happen when that preparation meets opportunity.
And boy, has this team had opportunities. Take the Mountaineers' just-completed sweep through the Big East tournament:
