{"id":709,"date":"2010-03-04T17:40:01","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T22:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ovathletics.com\/home\/?p=709"},"modified":"2010-03-04T17:40:01","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T22:40:01","slug":"no-10-west-liberty-hilltoppers-face-seton-hill-in-wviac-quarterfinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ovathletics.com\/home\/no-10-west-liberty-hilltoppers-face-seton-hill-in-wviac-quarterfinals\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 10 West Liberty Hilltoppers Face Seton Hill in WVIAC Quarterfinals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. \u2013 The West Liberty University men\u2019s basketball team begins its quest to add a West Virginia Conference Tournament title to its WVIAC regular-season championship tonight.<\/p>\n<p>Coach Jim Crutchfield\u2019s top-seeded Hilltoppers (25-1) ride a 20-game winning streak \u2013longest in the nation \u2013 into a 6:30 p.m. WVIAC Tournament quarterfinal against No. 8-seed Seton Hill (14-14) at the Charleston Civic Center Coliseum.<\/p>\n<p>West Liberty, ranked No. 1 in the Atlantic Region and No. 10 in the NCAA Division II national coaches\u2019 poll, already owns a pair of victories against the Griffins this season.<\/p>\n<p>The Hilltoppers handed Seton Hill a 98-86 setback on Jan. 21 at the ASRC and followed that up with a 118-86 thrashing in Greensburg, Pa. on Feb. 15.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t expect West Liberty to take SHU lightly, however, as the Griffins have been playing their best basketball of the season over the past couple of weeks.<\/p>\n<p>They enter tonight\u2019s game having won four of their last five outings \u2013 including an impressive 72-66 upset of regionally-ranked Fairmont State on the Falcons\u2019 home boards in a mutual regular-season finale.<\/p>\n<p>Seton Hill carried the momentum from that victory into a dominating 91-74 blowout of Davis &amp; Elkins in Monday\u2019s first-round game.<\/p>\n<p>Coach Tony Morocco used only seven players against D&amp;E but all seven scored in double-figures, paced by 22 points from standout sophomore guard Chris Giles and double-doubles from 6-9 senior center Cody Boone (14 points, 14 rebounds) and 6-2 senior guard Emmanuel Jackson (10 points, 12 rebounds).<\/p>\n<p>Giles, a second-team All-WVIAC honoree, appears to have made a complete recovery from a nagging ankle injury that has plagued him over the past month. The electrifying backcourter has posted four consecutive 20-point games and hit 23-of-24 free throws over that span.<\/p>\n<p>The first-round bye probably came at an opportune time for a West Liberty team that closed out the regular-season with 8 games in 17 days.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the grind, the Hilltoppers still lead the nation in scoring (104.0 ppg.) and five other statistical categories with six players averaging in double-figures.<\/p>\n<p>Junior Corey Pelle (17.5 ppg.) and senior Mike Mathey (15.9 ppg.) \u2013 a pair of first-team All-WVIAC guards \u2013 lead the scoring parade for West Liberty. Junior Barry Shetzer \u2013 who lit Seton Hill up for a career-high 40 points in the Feb. 15 game \u2013 averages 14.3 ppg. with fellow junior Jordan Fortney scoring at a 13.4 ppg. clip.<\/p>\n<p>Junior John Wolocinzuk averaged 13.1 ppg. and is coming off a career-high 16-rebound performance in Saturday\u2019s regular-season finale against Wheeling Jesuit while senior Scott Mirich (11.9 ppg.) has been averaging 20.3 points and nearly 6 rebounds a game in his last four games. Mirich scored a career-high 27 points at Wheeling Jesuit.<\/p>\n<p>West Liberty holds a 5-1 lead in the brief series against the Griffins and has won five consecutive WVIAC quarterfinal contests under Crutchfield.<\/p>\n<p>The winner of tonight\u2019s West Liberty-Seton Hill game advances to Friday\u2019s 8:30 p.m. semifinal against the survivor of tonight\u2019s late game between No. 4 seed Fairmont State (22-6) and No. 5 seed Charleston (18-10).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. \u2013 The West Liberty University men\u2019s basketball team begins its quest to add a West Virginia Conference Tournament title to its WVIAC regular-season championship tonight. Coach Jim Crutchfield\u2019s top-seeded Hilltoppers (25-1) ride a 20-game winning streak \u2013longest in the nation \u2013 into a 6:30 p.m. WVIAC Tournament quarterfinal against No. 8-seed Seton Hill [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>No. 10 West Liberty Hilltoppers Face Seton Hill in WVIAC Quarterfinals - Ohio Valley Athletics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ovathletics.com\/home\/no-10-west-liberty-hilltoppers-face-seton-hill-in-wviac-quarterfinals\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No. 10 West Liberty Hilltoppers Face Seton Hill in WVIAC Quarterfinals - Ohio Valley Athletics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"CHARLESTON, W.Va. \u2013 The West Liberty University men\u2019s basketball team begins its quest to add a West Virginia Conference Tournament title to its WVIAC regular-season championship tonight. 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