Published: July 19, 2008 12:06 am            

WVU men to play Iowa in Vegas

MORGANTOWN — West Virginia University will play Iowa, and Kentucky will meet Kansas State in the semifinals of the 2008 Findlay Toyota Las Vegas Basketball Tournament.

That was announced on Friday when plans were completed for the eight-team early-season event, which will be held Nov. 28 and 29 in Las Vegas’ Orleans Auditorium.

In the first two rounds leading up to that third round, West Virginia will meet Longwood in Morgantown on Thursday, Nov. 20, and Delaware State in Charleston on Tuesday, Nov. 25.

Those two teams also advance, in the non-championship bracket, with Longwood opposing Southeast Missouri State and Delaware State meeting Oakland of Michigan. The two winners and two losers will be paired for games on Saturday, Nov. 29.

The survivors of WVU-Iowa and Kentucky-Kansas State will clash for the tournament championship at 7:30 p.m. (Pacific time) on Nov. 29, following a contest between the losers of those two games.

This will be only the second meeting ever between the Mountaineers and the Hawkeyes, who won only 13 and lost 19 games in 2007-08. Iowa eked out a 79-77 victory over WVU on Dec. 29, 1956, in the Dixie Classic at Raleigh, N.C.

West Virginia is 4-12 all-time against Kentucky, which won the last meeting by 80-66 on Nov. 22, 2005, in the Guardians Classic at Kansas City. The Mountaineers dropped a 49-44 decision to Kansas State the only time the schools met — on Dec. 12, 1949, in Morgantown.

Delaware State is 0-3 against WVU, while this will be the first meeting with Longwood.

Bob Huggins, in his second year as Mountaineer head coach, has a coaching record against all of these teams. He is 1-0 against both Longwood and Delaware State, 1-0 against Iowa, 0-2 against Kentucky and 0-1 against Kansas State, where he was head coach in 2006-07.

His 76-64 win over Iowa on March 17, 2005, and a 69-60 loss to Kentucky came back-to-back in Huggins’ final two games at Cincinnati in the 2005 NCAA Regional tournament in Austin, Texas.

The other defeat by Kentucky was by 75-71 at Cincinnati on Nov. 28, 1990. His Akron team lost to Kansas State by 70-68 on Dec. 9, 1988.

It was in the Las Vegas Holiday Classic that Huggins’ Bearcats crushed Longwood 95-69 on Dec. 30, 2004. And he was at Akron for a 105-66 rout of Delaware State on Dec. 2, 1988.

There can’t be many schools that Huggins hasn’t faced in his 26-year coaching career, for which his teams have averaged 23.6 wins per season.

        

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