2008 ncca tournament bracket
2008 ncca tournament schedule
NCAA tournament bracket
No mention of a "bubble team" in this Big East semifinal preview between unranked West Virginia (24-9) and No. 9 Georgetown (26-4), with the Hoyas 3-point betting favorites on WagerWeb.com.
The Mountaineers may have entered the Big East tournament as slightly on the bubble, but wins over Providence on Wednesday and No. 15 UConn on Thursday should be enough to get WVU in the NCAA tournament regardless of tonight's outcome at Madison Square Garden.
West Virginia has been carried the past two games by junior forward Joe Alexander, who scored a career-high 34 points and pulled down seven rebounds against the Huskies after getting 22 and six, respectively, on Wednesday. He is averaging 29.8 points and 7.8 boards while shooting 52.6 percent in the last five games.
"I wanted him to do it the whole year," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said of Alexander. "He's slowed down. He's doing a much better job of reading the defense. He's such a hard matchup."
WVU dominated a bigger UConn team on the boards, 42-26, including a 14-5 difference on the offensive glass. The Mountaineers, who won the 2007 NIT championship at Madison Square Garden, are looking to advance to their first conference title game since losing in 2005.
The Hoyas improved to 13-0 all-time as the No. 1 seed with a school-record 17 3-pointers in Thursday's 82-63 victory over eighth-seeded Villanova.
Georgetown, which has won the tournament four times as the top seed including last season, won Thursday despite getting no points and four rebounds from leading scorer Roy Hibbert. The 7-foot-2 senior center averages 13.1 points and 6.3 rebounds but played only 14 minutes as he had foul trouble; Thursday’s game was by far his worst of the season."The nature of our team is when any particular guy is struggling, not doing well, we have other people that can step up," said Georgetown coach John Thompson III.
Georgetown connected on 17-of-28 attempts from behind the 3-point line and finished with 54.9 percent shooting effort from the floor. Jesse Sapp connected on six of those 3-pointers and finished the game with a team-high 23 points.
Hibbert, a member of the All-Big East first team, will look to get untracked against West Virginia, a team he had 12 points and 10 rebounds against in a 58-57 win on Jan. 26 -- the only regular-season meeting between the teams.
That contest was decided when Patrick Ewing Jr. blocked Da'Sean Butler's layup at the buzzer after Sapp put up 15 points in going 3-for-7 from beyond the arc.
The Hoyas won the only tournament meeting with the Mountaineers on March 8, 2000.
The winner of this game will play the winner of the game between No. 25 Marquette and Pittsburgh in the
championship game Saturday.
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