BIG EAST GAME PREVIEW: West Virginia @ South Florida

January 5, 2005

South Florida opens up their history in the Big East conference tonight by hosting the West Virginia Mountaineers. Here are some pre-game articles from around the net:

Nothing to come Easy on the Road (Charleston Gazette)
WVU REady for Big East Opener (Register-Herald)
Bulls Tackle Big East on Little but faith (St. Petersburg Times)
St Pete Times Scouting Report of WVU/USF
Worst May Be Still Coming for Beat-up Bulls


READ REST OF PREVIEW...CLICK "Read More" BELOW


Welcome to the Big East, Robert McCullum! McCullum and his South Florida Bulls have had their share of problems this preseason and they just do not end. They could be without walk-on point guard Chris Capko tonight after he suffered a broken nose and concussion last week in a loss to UAB. If so, that means the Bulls are without injured point guards Chris Howard, Collin Dennis and Capko and they dismissed guard David Sills prior to the season. This would leave the Bulls with just 5 scholarship players to face the experienced and very good West Virginia Mountaineers.

James Holmes will play PG for the Bulls and Solomon Jones will be called on to get the points and rebounds inside while McHugh Mattis and Melvyn Richardson will have to defend on the perimeter all night against the 3-pt shooters of WVU. Melvin Buckley has big conference experience and will be called on to rebound and score all night as well.

For WVU, they will start 4 seniors, including all-league performers in Mike Gansey and Kevin Pittsnogle as well as G Joe Herber and PG JD Collins. The 5th starter is junior Frank Young and senior Patrick Beilein is the first off the bench with sophomore PG Darris Nichols. WVU is not very deep, but John Beilein will look like he has an assembly line of players compared to what Robert McCullum has to work with.


The only way I see this came staying remotely close is if WVU decides to get extensive playing time for freshmen Alex Ruoff and Joe Alexander as well as PSU-transfer Rob Summers. That might not even matter much with a WVU team that beat Oklahoma in Oklahoma City 92-68 recently.

I have seen a line on this game of -10, I really can't believe it could be this low!

NBE Blogger Prediction:

WVU 80 USF 63