MORGANTOWN — Da’Sean Butler said the goaltending that wasn’t definitely was.
Butler was talking about the last play of Georgetown’s 58-57 victory against West Virginia on Saturday night at the WVU Coliseum, when the Hoyas’ Patrick Ewing, Jr. sent Butler’s potentially game-winning layup at the buzzer in another direction.
“I went to the rim and went straight up,” Butler said. “I saw him coming and watched the ball come down. When he swatted it, I said good, ‘that’s goaltending.’'
No it wasn’t, the officials said.
“Looking back, I should have turned my hand over and dunked the ball,” Butler said. “There are a lot of things I wish I could do over.”
Among those dressed in blue and gold, he was hardly alone in that regard.
The actual game-winner came 6 seconds earlier, when the Hoyas’ Jessie Sapp got a little separation between himself and the Mountaineers’ Alex Ruoff and hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key.
“There were a lot of defensive mistakes,” Ruoff said, pointing the finger at himself first. “I can’t really give up a 3 at the end when we’re up by two. That’s my mistake.”
It’s difficult to say whether or not Sapp’s shot is what Georgetown coach John Thompson III had in mind after the ninth-ranked Hoyas (16-2 overall, 6-1 Big East) got the ball back with 31 seconds remaining because everyone on the floor touched the ball at least once during the buildup.
“These guys have confidence in each other to share the ball and make the extra pass,” Thompson III said. “And we have guys that can make 3s. Jessie made a huge shot for us.”
Huggins wasn’t saying much about the possible goaltending — “Everybody can look at it and make their own decisions,” he said — but he did suggest it shouldn’t have mattered anyway.
The Mountaineers, who’ve suddenly found big trouble in the free-throw shooting department, missed 11 of 23 from the line in the game. If they’d only missed 10, Huggins said the scenario is much more advantageous.
“There’s a huge difference whether it’s a three-point game or a two-point game,” Huggins said, speaking of the different ways to defend the Hoyas on their last possession. The Mountaineers (15-5, 4-3) didn’t want to allow any penetration and let someone like 7-foot-2 center Roy Hibbert get something easy to tie it when they had a two-point lead.
“If it’s a three-point game, you get up in them and make them drive,” he said.
So the finger was ultimately pointed back at the foul line, where the Mountaineers have made only 22 of 51 attempts in their last two games.
“We shouldn’t be shooting that poorly,” Ruoff said.
“They killed us,” Butler said.
Huggins is at a loss.
“What were we from the line, 12-for-23?” he asked. “We are supposed to be a good shooting team. We had it, and they were able to close the gap.”
West Virginia held a lead in the game for more than 31 minutes, with the bulk of Georgetown’s time on top coming in the game’s first 5 minutes. Throughout the next 35, the Hoyas led only four more times, never for more than a minute, and never higher than one point, while the Mountaineers built an advantage that reached as much as 10 at the 16:49 mark of the second half.
That’s when they rebounded from failing to hit a field goal during the final 4:40 of the first half by outscoring Georgetown 13-2 to start the second half.
It was a run that began with a Jamie Smalligan 3-pointer top open the second half and reached its pinnacle when Ruoff hit the last of his three 3-pointers almost 4 minutes later.
From there, the Hoyas slowly chipped away at a point-a-minute pace, taking a short-lived one-point lead at the 7-minute mark on an Austin Freeman backdoor layup.
“Our guys did a good job at sticking together and making stops as a unit and rebounding as a unit when we needed to make stops and get rebounds,” Thompson III said.
Smalligan wound up with six points, but that’s not where the seldom-used 7-footer made his mark. His challenge was to contain Hibbert, who had only 12 points and 10 rebounds, a virtual victory in itself.
“I thought this was Jamie’s best performance,” Huggins said.
Darris Nichols hit four 3-pointers and paced the Mountaineers with 16 points. Ruoff had 13 and Butler finished with 13.
Ewing, who doesn’t start, scored only six points, but like Smalligan, no one was talking about his offense after the game.
“He did a tremendous job,” Ruoff said. “That was a heckuva move at the end to get the ball.”
Controversial or not.
“During the course of the game, there are a lot of calls that are right and a lot that are wrong,” Thompson III said. “I think that the officials are consistent on how they call things, from my vantage point on the bench. I feel that the effort Patrick made was unbelievable. To put himself in a position to get that block was unbelievable.”