Cardinals Inch Past Toppers
Harris scores 25 points, Catich has double-double

By JIM ELLIOTT, For The Intelligencer and appears here with permission
POSTED: February 3, 2009   

Steve Catich's turnaround lay-in with 2.2 seconds remaining was Wheeling Jesuit's only field goal in the game's last 6-plus minutes Monday against West Liberty, but it was enough to give the Cards their first victory in the last seven tries against the Hilltoppers, 77-73.

Tied at 73-73 for nearly 3 minutes, Wheeling Jesuit coach Dan Sancomb called a timeout and started drawing up a couple of plays, one to fool a man-to-man defense, one to bust a matchup zone.

Meanwhile, West Liberty coach Jim Crutchfield, whose team is now 3-3 on Mondays and 11-2 the rest of the week, was trying to figure out where to focus his defense among what seemed like too many options.

''They had Cedric Harris who can pull up off the dribble and shoot, they've got guys who can shoot 3s and they've got guys that can play inside,'' Crutchfield said.

They got it to one of the guys that can play inside.

''Steve just stepped right across the lane and Cedric (Harris) made the right play,'' Sancomb said. ''Steve made a strong move, spun in and finished the shot.''

With that, Sancomb had his first coaching victory against West Liberty and Catich finished off a strong double-double with 18 points and 12 rebounds. Harris, who missed Saturday's double-overtime thriller against Fairmont because of flu-like symptoms, led the Cardinals (9-10 overall, 7-5 West Virginia Conference) with 25 points and six assists. Maqsood Harrington added 15 points.

West Liberty (14-5, 8-3) led by as much as 13 on a Shane Maynard layup 30 seconds into the second half, but Wheeling Jesuit erased that with an 11-0 run that spanned 3:02 and eventually took a 53-50 lead with 14 minutes remaining. The Hilltoppers regained the upperhand only once, on a couple of Maynard free throws at the 12:05 mark, the rest of the way. The Cardinals weren't the only team to have only one field goal in the final 6:18 - West Liberty did so, too, on a Maynard lay-in with 3:16 remaining.

''It was a struggle,'' Sancomb said.

The 73 points were by far a season-low for the Hilltoppers, who average an NCAA Division II-leading 103.8 points per game.

It's tough to win when you score 30 points under your average, almost as tough as it is to play a wide open, run-and-gun offense when some of your key players, like leading scorer Ben Howlett, aren't 100 percent. Howlett played 22 gutty minutes, almost all in the first half, but scored only nine points, 14 under his average.

''It was a little bit of everything,'' Crutchfield said. ''Obviously missing Ben is part of it. We're missing a couple that are a little bit under the weather right now and they force us to not to play as much uptempto game. It was a little bit of everything. And, we had the ball within 2-3 feet of the basket about 30 times and it didn't go in the hole. We've got to score when we get the ball inside.''

Either way, the Cardinals defense held West Liberty to its fewest points since its last game last season, an 82-72 loss in the WVC Tournament semifinals to Pitt-Johnstown. Corey Pelle, the reigning WVC Men's Basketball Player of the Week, led West Liberty with 17 points - as he did in that loss to UPJ - but ended a personal run of three straight games with at least 20. Maynard added 11 - the 98th time in his career he's hit double digits - and John Wolosinczuk finished with 12 points.

''West Liberty does so many good things on offense from moving without the ball to always making the extra pass, and we did a good job of containing the dribble penetration where they weren't getting in seams as much, and getting hands out to their shooter,'' Sancomb said. ''They didn't have a great shooting night, but we like to think we had a little something to do with that by getting out there and contesting their shots.''