We applaud you Mountaineer basketball.
We take pride here at WBGV in talking as much shit towards other teams as possible. But, we also take pride in sitting on our ass and letting other people do the job for us. That's why your post game press conference was a thing of beauty. It killed the proverbial two birds with the proverbial one stone.
So, take it away Mountaineers...
Not only did West Virginia totally outplay and outhustle Duke on the court in their 73-67 win today, the Mountaineers also got the better of the Blue Devils in the postgame interviews.
Sick of being an underdog despite their the spate of recent success (three appearances in the Round of 16 in four years), West Virginia players lit into Duke. West Virginia forward Joe Alexander led the charge. He had the assembled news media cracking up when a reporter told him that Duke had eight McDonald’s all-Americans.
"Who?" he asked, very skeptically.
He wasn’t done. Nor were his teammates.
Alexander on breaking down Duke on film: "We knew that coming in that they were just going to stand around and not rebound. So we were ready to exploit that."
Alexander on the Duke mystique: ""We don’t care that they’re Duke. That doesn’t mean anything to us. People look at West Virginia like we’re this mid-major school playing all these big schools and upsetting them. That’s not the case at all."
West Virginia center Jamie Smalligan: "We don’t have any McDonald’s All-Americans and we don’t have any guys who were the No. 1 player in their state. But I think that Coach K would love to have Joe Alexander on his team right now."
West Virginia guard Joe Mazzulla: "Duke is a great team with a great tradition and they have a great coach. But when you have the media coming up to you and constantly asking you about Duke’s tradition and we’re getting overlooked. We’re a good team, and we’re a great team when we play the way we did in the second half. I think Coach Huggins as well as the rest of the teams want to get to a point where teams have to worry about playing us and not us have to worry about playing other teams."
Alexander on the Big East vs. the A.C.C.: "People are always hating on the Big East. I don’t understand why. We came in the fifth in the Big East and we manhandled a good A.C.C. team."
Cam Thoroughman asked whether Duke’s Greg Paulus was one of the eight McDonald’s all-Americans. When told yes, Thoroughman said, "Oh my God. Are you kidding?"
[Pete Thamel -- NYTimes]