WVU Guard, Mike Gansey is from a Cleveland area suburb, so a Q&A interview with him.
Q. Do you miss St. Bonaventure at all?
A. Yeah, I miss the people there. But I don’t really miss the basketball that much.
Q. Several years removed, any regrets about you and your teammates truncating the season?
A. No.
Q. Why did it have to come to that?
A. We weren’t getting straight answers from the university. People think we bailed on the university, but that wasn’t the case. We were kept in the dark, and we were upset. We had a right to know more than they were telling us. I stand by my decision, and I’m sure my former teammates do, too.
Q. Biggest difference between West Virginia and Ohio?
A. The hills, and there’s a lot of ice on the roads in the winter. I’ve gotten into three minor car accidents because of the hills or hitting a sheet of ice. They don’t plow here quite like they do in Ohio.
It’s mainly the hills. People in NE Ohio are flatlanders. They have no clue how to handle hills or curves in the road — no matter what the weather.
Gansey is also saying that he looks forward to playing this road game.
But when the boos rain down in a monsoon of animosity, when his name is treated like the four-letter word that it is and when every stellar play produces sighs of exasperation — ah … that’s when Gansey really enjoys himself.
“I like to be in those situations,” said No. 9 West Virginia’s senior forward.
Tonight, Gansey is going to be in hog heaven.
That’s because no place on earth will be as hostile as No 14 Pittsburgh’s Petersen Events Center when the Mountaineers put their unblemished Big East record up against the Panthers (17-3, 6-3 Big East).
Game time for the ESPN-televised game is 9 p.m.
“Pitt (fans), they say things that no one says,” Gansey said. Then, with a smile creeping across his face, said: “It’s going to be fun.”
Big East Basketball blog has another fine preview for the game.
With seniors that can shoot the ball as well as West Virginia, you have to beleive they have a chance to beat anyone, anywhere. Relying on the 3-ball has its downfalls, because when it is not falling, they can look ugly. So far, they have gotten away with it in the games things weren’t falling in the conference. However, seeing that they can lose to Marshall in Charleston, but beat Villanova in the Pavilion shows how high or low they can go.
The Mountaineers seem to have been flirting with defeat a little more lately. Pittsburgh, at home, knows how big this game is and I expect them to be really charged up and ready to go, especially defensively and on the boards. Aaron Gray will cause Pittsnogle to work a little extra harder on the defensive end and on the boards and could cause him to wear down. Of course, Gray having to shadow Pittsnogle on the perimeter is an interesting dynamic in itself as that takes Pitt’s best rebounder away from the hoop and puts him in unfamiliar territory defensively. If Pitt can get 30 minutes, or in the neighborhood of, from Gray, that means they should have their game go they way they want it. If they have to adapt and go smaller to counter, I think that it will pull them out of their comfort zone and WVU will slowly carve them up.
I’m just hoping Pittsnogle is spending the last few nights not getting any sleep while tending to his new kid.
