ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 18, 1995 TAG: 9512180099
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
West Virginia's basketball team is very familiar as it visits Cassell Coliseum tonight.
The Mountaineers (3-2) have four starters back from last year. Gale Catlett, headed for his 700th game as a head coach in January, is still in charge. Former Roanoke College coach Mel Hankinson is on the WVU staff, too.
It's the program that's different. West Virginia is where Virginia Tech wants to be for hoops someday as well, in the Big East Conference.
With a Sugar Bowl kickoff in 13 days, the Hokies have seen what Big East membership can mean to a program. It didn't take West Virginia long to realize that a league founded on roundball can really make a difference.
For the first Big East game in WVU Coliseum history on Dec.2, students camped out the night before to get in line for general admission seats. The arena seats 14,000.
A squeezing-room crowd of 15,193 - the fifth largest in WVU history and biggest since Nevada-Las Vegas visited in February 1983 - watched Georgetown rally and win 86-83 in overtime. One week later, WVU attracted 5,190 for a victory over former Atlantic 10 foe Duquesne.
``The thing I didn't realize,'' Catlett said last week, ``is what a difference it makes in recruiting. We have four or five kids who I know we'd have never gotten in with if we hadn't gotten in the Big East.
``I thought it would take time, be a 3- to 5-year process. Not right at first did I think it would make a difference. Now, I do. It's a win-win situation.''
It always was a big deal when John Chaney or John Calipari made A-10 trips to Morgantown. It's bigger when John Thompson visits. Who would fans rather see matching sideline stares with Catlett? Jim Boeheim or Jim Baron?
Of course, Catlett knows that playing in the Big East and winning in the Big East are different matters. The league has bloated to 13 members, and divisions are used only for tournament seeding.
After New Year's, the Mountaineers' only non-conference date is against Marshall at the Charleston Civic Center, and, doing one of the three new kids on the low-post block no favors, the Big East has only four of WVU's last 12 games at home.
If you're talking ``the pits'' of the Big East, the ``Cat House'' would have to rank right up there when it's filled up to its 'Eers.
``It's a Catch-22 situation,'' said Catlett, in his 18th season at his alma mater. ``The name, the notoriety, the exposure will help us, but we're going to be playing better teams night in and night out, too.
``I always thought the Atlantic 10 was an pretty good league, and it is, but the Big East has people that can beat you every time you play.''
The entrance to the Big East also doesn't mean West Virginia is on the verge of reaching its first Final Four since 1959, when Jerry West was a junior. This season, most publications have WVU in the final four of the Big East - as in after ninth place.
In fact, WVU arrives in the Big East at a critical juncture for the program. The Mountaineers were 13-13 last year, the first time in Catlett's 23 years as a head coach that his team has not had a winning record.
Although WVU has been to postseason play in 13 of the past 15 years, the 'Eers have made only one NCAA trip in the 1990s, and have only one NCAA victory since the tournament field was expanded to 64 teams a decade ago.
So, this is opportunity knocking, and Catlett knows it. He's always been recognized as a superb sideline strategist. The Big East will do more than increase WVU's season-ticket base by 25 percent, to 5,000, which already has happened.
``We were recruiting some kids who didn't know we were in the Big East, and when they found out, they listened,'' Catlett said. ``It's going to help us. College basketball changes more rapidly than football.
``A great player or two can mean a lot. You're a different team, a different program. There's a freshness to it for me, too, going the places we will be going.''
When WVU is headed to New York now, it won't mean Olean. The Mountaineers are going to face a different, and tougher, geography test, although Georgetown and George Washington are roughly in the same neighborhood.
But one thing conference opponents will learn, as the Hoyas did, is that getting out of Morgantown could be tougher than getting there.
LENGTH: Medium: 78 linesby CNB