SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Remember those unconscious games Casey Mitchell was having early in the season for West Virginia? Well, he had another one Monday night at the Carrier Dome.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Remember those unconscious games Casey Mitchell was having early in the season for West Virginia? Well, he had another one Monday night at the Carrier Dome.
Unfortunately, this time it was a direct result of having little help from anyone else. When push came to shove, coach Bob Huggins had no choice but to let Mitchell try to light things up.
That this Mitchell vs. the World thing - or at least Mitchell vs. the Orange - didn't quite work should come as little surprise to anyone.
Mitchell scored 23 points and drained seven 3-pointers, but the Mountaineers turned the ball over too many times, couldn't score inside and were overwhelmed by Syracuse runs in the second half. With Mitchell as the catalyst they answered all but the last run and that left them on the short end of a 63-52 score in front of a crowd of 22,669.
It was the fifth loss in the last nine games for the Mountaineers, who still must play four more ranked teams in their final five games of the regular season.
"It's all about how you handle the pressure,'' West Virginia forward Kevin Jones said. "And we didn't handle it well.''
Handling pressure was certainly an element in this one. West Virginia led at halftime and by six early in the second half, but No. 17 Syracuse put together three solid runs in the second half. The Mountaineers answered two of those runs, but failed to counter the third. The Orange led 51-49 with eight minutes to play when they pounded the ball inside and put the game away with a 10-3 run.
But the real problem was not so much pressure as it was simply making shots.
Mitchell was magnificent. He made seven of 12 3-point tries and had his highest scoring output since a 28-point effort at Georgetown more than a month ago. It was early in the season that the senior shooting guard had consecutive games of 31, 27, 25 and 27 points.
The problem was that the only reason he was pulling the trigger like that was because West Virginia couldn't make the easy shots it was getting.
Working against Syracuse's 2-3 zone, the Mountaineers got the ball inside just like they wanted to do. But from there Kevin Jones was 2-of-8 and Deniz Kilicli was 1-of-7.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Remember those unconscious games Casey Mitchell was having early in the season for West Virginia? Well, he had another one Monday night at the Carrier Dome.
Unfortunately, this time it was a direct result of having little help from anyone else. When push came to shove, coach Bob Huggins had no choice but to let Mitchell try to light things up.
That this Mitchell vs. the World thing - or at least Mitchell vs. the Orange - didn't quite work should come as little surprise to anyone.
Mitchell scored 23 points and drained seven 3-pointers, but the Mountaineers turned the ball over too many times, couldn't score inside and were overwhelmed by Syracuse runs in the second half. With Mitchell as the catalyst they answered all but the last run and that left them on the short end of a 63-52 score in front of a crowd of 22,669.
It was the fifth loss in the last nine games for the Mountaineers, who still must play four more ranked teams in their final five games of the regular season.
"It's all about how you handle the pressure,'' West Virginia forward Kevin Jones said. "And we didn't handle it well.''
Handling pressure was certainly an element in this one. West Virginia led at halftime and by six early in the second half, but No. 17 Syracuse put together three solid runs in the second half. The Mountaineers answered two of those runs, but failed to counter the third. The Orange led 51-49 with eight minutes to play when they pounded the ball inside and put the game away with a 10-3 run.
But the real problem was not so much pressure as it was simply making shots.
Mitchell was magnificent. He made seven of 12 3-point tries and had his highest scoring output since a 28-point effort at Georgetown more than a month ago. It was early in the season that the senior shooting guard had consecutive games of 31, 27, 25 and 27 points.
The problem was that the only reason he was pulling the trigger like that was because West Virginia couldn't make the easy shots it was getting.
Working against Syracuse's 2-3 zone, the Mountaineers got the ball inside just like they wanted to do. But from there Kevin Jones was 2-of-8 and Deniz Kilicli was 1-of-7.
Is it any wonder Mitchell was asked to bail the offense out?
"We did what we wanted to do,'' Huggins said of the offense in general, but certainly not shooting. "It's not that we wanted [Mitchell] shooting like that, but Kevin had shots and didn't make any. Deniz had shots and didn't make any. You go with the guy who was making shots.''
And it nearly worked. Mitchell had three 3s in the first half and his third just before the half gave WVU a short-lived six-point lead. He had two more in a mid-second-half run that erased most of an eight-point SU lead, then had another as West Virginia clawed back from nine down to come within that 51-49 score in the last eight minutes.
"I thought I was going to be able to shoot well. I only had six shots last game [a win over DePaul] but they all felt good,'' Mitchell said. "I started making them and coach said to keep on shooting them.''
That only took the Mountaineers so far, though.
The loss dropped West Virginia (16-9, 7-6 Big East) from a four-way tie for fifth place in the jumbled Big East standings to a spot alone at No. 9 in the league, a game behind Syracuse, which rose only from ninth to eighth place. While both of those moves might seem significant given that the top eight teams receive at least a first-round bye in the Big East tournament that begins in three weeks, the fact is that the standings are so tight that everything could change quickly. Only two games in the loss column separate the third- and 11th-place teams in the conference.
Syracuse, meanwhile, continues a roller-coaster ride that of late had been mostly down. The Orange (21-6, 8-6) had lost six of eight coming into Monday's game after beginning the season 18-0 and rising as high as No. 3 in the polls.
Brandon Triche fought through foul trouble to score 20 for Syracuse, while Kris Joseph added 16, Rick Jackson 10, Scoop Jardine nine and C.J. Fair eight.
Reach Dave Hickman at 304-348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.
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