Irish Fall Off Mountaineers: West Virginia, Georgetown in Big East Title Game

NEW YORK -- It was the shot that Notre Dame wanted. For the first time in more than three weeks, though, that shot did not fall.

West Virginia beat the Fighting Irish 53-51 on Friday night as Tory Jackson's potential game-winning three-pointer with :04 remaining bounced off the front of the rim. The senior point guard dribbled up court and launched a three -- one night earlier he'd buried a three from exactly that same spot in the final two minutes against Pittsburgh -- as his parents and a few of his 13 siblings, all seated in the first row under the basket, looked on breathlessly.

"He came down and put it up," said West Virginia's Da'Sean Butler, who led all scorers with 24 points on 60 percent shooting. "Either you win or lose on that one. I just prayed he didn't (make it)."

The shot bounced just short -- "I thought it was a good shot when I let it go," Jackson said -- and bounced off teammates Luke Harangody and then Tyrone Nash as time expired. For the Mountaineers, the victory means a berth in Saturday night's Big East Championship for the first time since 2005. For the Irish, it means an end to their six-game win streak, their longest since a ten-game streak early in the 2007-08 season.

Jackson's miss prevented Notre Dame from advancing to the final. One night earlier Butler's make under similar circumstances allowed the Mountaineers to survive. The 6-7 senior banked in a game-winning three-pointer (Butler actually called "bank" as he shot it) to beat Cincinnati as time expired. If Butler's performance on Thursday was dramatic, his encore on Friday was masterful. During a stretch in the first and second halves he scored 13 of the Mountaineers' 19 points on six of eight shooting.

The contest was as deliberately paced as a "Law & Order" episode. West Virginia led 23-20 at the half-a shot-put heave three by Notre Dame's Ben Hansbrough at the buzzer was waved off, and correctly so. The Irish offense, as has been its wont since Harangody was injured in mid-February, controlled the ball as if time of possession mattered. Which, for this offense, it does.

Strangely enough, it took losing the nation's second-leading scorer for six games for the Irish to discover their true identity. Without Harangody, whose presence is like having access to Google as you sit inside a reference library, the rest of the Irish were forced to crack open the books. The result is a unit that, although lower-scoring, is far more cohesive offensively. The Irish basically play a six-man rotation now -- Harangody does not start -- and against the Mountaineers all six players scored at least five points while nobody scored more than 17.

The game featured four ties -- four more than coaches Bob Huggins (sweat suit) and Mike Brey (mock turtleneck) sported -- but West Virginia never trailed after Kevin Jones' jumper evened the score at 12-all at the 8:59 mark of the first half. The Mountaineers lack the depth of a Syracuse or Kansas, but in Butler they have a bona fide star (think of a younger Brandon Roy) surrounded by veteran role players who do their jobs.

The Mountaineers, like their coach who sports sideline sweat suit attire (with black loafers, it should be noted) in America's fashion capitol, are blithely unconcerned about how they look. West Virginia may not be pretty -- lunch-pail All-American Cam Thoroughman clanked a wide-open breakaway lay-up in the second half -- but they are now 26-6 and only one of those losses has come to a team ranked outside of the top 10.

"I grew up in Midville (W. Va)," said Huggins, a West Virginia alumnus, after the win. "Five hundred people, two stoplights, nine bars. That was Midville.

"I got in a truck with this guy one time and I looked and he didn't have a rear-view mirror. I said, 'You don't have a rear-view mirror.' 'I don't back up,' he said. 'We're going forward, son.'"

As are the Mountaineers. To a date in the Big East championship game versus Georgetown.