Just nine days before traveling to NY for the Jimmy V Classic on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, Virginia junior guard London Perrantes was in the hospital undergoing an appendectomy. Despite being so close to one another, Virginia and West Virginia are meeting for the first time in 31 seasons.
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John Egbunu scored 14 for the Gators, who had two players foul out and never found their shooting touch.
Although Virginia escaped a matchup with a middling Ohio State team earlier in the season, Tuesday’s showdown with West Virginia was the Cavaliers’ first game against a ranked opponent this year.
He shot 5 for 6 from the field in the second half including hitting all three of his 3-point attempts as the Cavaliers bounced back from the halftime deficit to cruise over the final minutes.
Perrantes came out firing in the second half.
He turned out to be well enough to score all 13 of his points in the second half. I’ll say this, though, living in the heart of God’s Country: 90 percent of the people I know want him gone post-haste, regardless of the money involved or the available candidates. “We had them on the ropes (in the first half) and our motion was looking good”.
Virginia finished the game with a highly uncharacteristic 19 turnovers, but the Cavaliers improved in every other facet of the game in the second half.
“We were shaky to start, everybody was with the pressure that West Virginia put on”, Coach Tony Bennett said.
After a good five minutes of talking about the things his team did poorly in their first loss of the season, Huggins was asked if he was happy with the Mountaineers’ first half when they led by as many as 12 points and finally by six at halftime. “I just wanted to get back in the groove”, Perrantes said of the first half when he didn’t take a shot.
That weakness was dealing with Anthony Gill, who led a comeback with 15 first-half points on 7 of 9 shooting, finishing with 15 points as WVU took a 36-30 lead into the locker room. “We got punched in the mouth”, Bennett said. This is a team that had scored just 16 points with 6:30 remaining in the first half, and finished with 70.
At this point WVU had made but one of its last four shots while Virginia had hit four straight and the Mountaineers had been mishandling the ball turning it over four times in 4:25. We’re taking scoop shots from 12 feet.
Bob Huggins’ team shot 32 percent from beyond the arc a year ago – and the Mountaineers are even worse this season with Juwan Staten and Gary Browne gone. However, Virginia did what it does – made enough plays on the offensive end, and stifled a Mountaineers offense that has difficulty making shots outside of the paint.
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Following the Jimmy V Classic, Virginia will host Big East power Villanova in non-conference action on Saturday, Dec. 19. West Virginia participated in 2008, a 68-65 loss to Davidson. West Virginia, however, will have their hands full with a top-10 Virginia team at Madison Square Garden.
